7»M 


THE  CIMOUS  REPUBUC 
OF  GONDOUR 

BY 
SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 


BONI    AND     LIVERIQHT 
NEW    YORK 


DUKE  UNIVERSITY 


LIBRARY 


The  Glenn  Negley  Collection 
of  Utopian  Literature 


THE  CURIOUS  REPUBLIC 
OF  GONDOUR 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcliive 
in  2010  witli  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/curiousrepublicoOOtwai 


THE    CURIOUS    REPUBLIC 
OF       GONDOUR 

AND  OTHER  WHIMSICAL  SKETCHES 
BY     SAMUEL     L.     CLEMENS 

author  of   "tom  sawyer,"   "huckleberry  finn," 
"innocents  abroad,"  etc. 


^1  ify)  h 


NEW   YORK 

BONI  AND  LIVERIGHT 
1919 


Copyright,  1919, 
By  BONI  &  LIVER  IGHT,  Inc. 


Printed  in  the  U.  S.  A. 


NOTE 

Most  of  the  sketches  in  this  volume  were  taken 
from  a  series  the  author  wrote  for  The  Galaxy  from  May, 
1870,  to  April,  1871.  The  rest  appeared  in  The  Buffalo 
Express. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Curious  Republic  of  Gondour      ...  1 

A  Memory 12 

Introductory  to  "Memoranda" 20 

About  Smells 25 

A  Couple  of  Sad  Experiences 30 

Dan  Murphy 34 

The  "Tournament"  IN  A.D.  1870     ....  36 

Curious  Relic  for  Sale 42 

A  Reminiscence  of  the  Back  Settlements     .  54 

A  Royal  Compliment 59 

The  Approaching  Epidemic 65 

The  Tone-Imparting  Committee       ....  69 

Goldsmith's  Friend  Abroad  Again  ....  75 

Our  Precious  Lunatic 110 

The  European  War 119 

The  Wild  Man  Interviewed 125 

Last  Words  of  Great  Men 132 


THE  CURIOUS  REPUBLIC 
OF  GONDOUR 


THE  CURIOUS  REPUBLIC  OF 
GONDOUR 

AS  soon  as  I  had  learned  to  speak  the 
language  a  httle,  I  became  greatly- 
interested  in  the  people  and  the  sys- 
tem of  government. 
I  found  that  the  nation  had  at  first  tried 
universal  suffrage  pure  and  simple,  but  had 
thrown  that  form  aside  because  the  result  was 
not  satisfactory.  It  had  seemed  to  deliver  all 
power  into  the  hands  of  the  ignorant  and  non- 
tax-paying classes;  and  of  a  necessity  the  re- 
sponsible offices  were  filled  from  these  classes 
also. 

A  remedy  was  sought.  The  people  believed 
they  had  found  it ;  not  in  the  destruction  of  uni- 
versal suffrage,  but  in  the  enlargement  of  it. 
It  was  an  odd  idea,  and  ingenious.  You  must 
understand,  the  constitution  gave  every  man  a 
vote;  therefore  that  vote  was  a  vested  right, 

1 


2  CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

and  could  not  be  taken  away.  But  the  consti- 
tution did  not  say  that  certain  individuals 
might  not  be  given  two  votes,  or  ten!  So  an 
amendatory  clause  was  inserted  in  a  quiet  way ; 
a  clause  which  authorised  the  enlargement  of 
the  suffrage  in  certain  cases  to  be  specified  by 
statute.  To  offer  to  "limit"  the  suffrage  might 
have  made  instant  trouble;  the  offer  to  "en- 
large" it  had  a  pleasant  aspect.  But  of  course 
the  newspapers  soon  began  to  suspect;  and 
then  out  they  came!  It  was  found,  however, 
that  for  once — and  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  republic — property,  character, 
and  intellect  were  able  to  wield  a  political  in- 
fluence; for  once,  money,  virtue,  and  intelh- 
gence  took  a  vital  and  a  united  interest  in  a 
political  question;  for  once  these  powers  went 
to  the  "primaries"  in  strong  force;  for  once  the 
best  men  in  the  nation  were  put  forward  as 
candidates  for  that  parliament  whose  business 
it  should  be  to  enlarge  the  suffrage.  The 
weightiest  half  of  the  press  quickly  joined 
forces  with  the  new  movement,  and  left  the 


CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR  3 

other  half  to  rail  about  the  proposed  "destruc- 
tion of  the  Hberties"  of  the  bottom  layer  of 
society,  the  hitherto  governing  class  of  the  com- 
munity. 

The  victory  was  complete.  The  new  law  was 
framed  and  passed.  Under  it  every  citizen, 
howsoever  poor  or  ignorant,  possessed  one  vote, 
so  universal  suffrage  still  reigned ;  but  if  a  man 
possessed  a  good  common-school  education  and 
no  money,  he  had  two  votes ;  a  high-school  edu- 
cation gave  him  four;  if  he  had  property  like- 
wise, to  the  value  of  three  thousand  sacos,  he 
wielded  one  more  vote;  for  every  fifty  thousand 
sacos  a  man  added  to  his  property,  he  was  en- 
titled to  another  vote;  a  university  education 
entitled  a  man  to  nine  votes,  even  though  he 
owned  no  property.  Therefore,  learning  be- 
ing more  prevalent  and  more  easily  acquired 
than  riches,  educated  men  became  a  wholesome 
check  upon  wealthy  men,  since  they  could  out- 
vote them.  Learning  goes  usually  with  up- 
rightness, broad  views,  and  humanity;  so  the 
learned  voters,  possessing  the  balance  of  power, 


4  CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

became  the  vigilant  and  efficient  protectors  of 
the  great  lower  rank  of  society. 

And  now  a  curious  thing  developed  itself — 
a  sort  of  emulation,  whose  object  was  voting- 
power  !  Whereas  formerly  a  man  was  honored 
only  according  to  the  amount  of  money  he 
possessed,  his  grandeur  was  measured  now  by 
the  number  of  votes  he  wielded.  A  man  with 
only  one  vote  was  conspicuously  respectful  to 
his  neighbor  who  possessed  three.  And  if  he 
was  a  man  above  the  common-place,  he  was  as 
conspicuously  energetic  in  his  determination  to 
acquire  three  for  himself.  This  spirit  of  emu- 
lation invaded  all  ranks.  Votes  based  upon 
capital  were  commonly  called  "mortal"  votes, 
because  they  cduld  be  lost;  those  based  upon 
learning  were  called  "immortal,"  because  they 
were  permanent,  and  because  of  their  custom- 
arily imperishable  character  they  were  nat- 
urally more  valued  than  the  other  sort.  I  say 
"customarily"  for  the  reason  that  these  votes 
were  not  absolutely  imperishable,  since  insanity 
could  suspend  them. 


CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR  5 

Under  this  system,  gambling  and  specula- 
tion almost  ceased  in  the  republic.  A  man 
honoured  as  the  possessor  of  great  voting- 
power  could  not  afford  to  risk  the  loss  of  it 
upon  a  doubtful  chance. 

It  was  curious  to  observe  the  manners  and 
customs  which  the  enlargement  plan  produced. 
Walking  the  street  with  a  friend  one  day  he 
dehvered  a  careless  bow  to  a  passer-by,  and 
then  remarked  that  that  person  possessed  only 
one  vote  and  would  probably  never  earn  an- 
other; he  was  more  respectful  to  the  next  ac- 
quaintance he  met ;  he  explained  that  this  salute 
was  a  four-vote  bow.  I  tried  to  "average"  the 
importance  of  the  people  he  accosted  after 
that,  by  the  nature  of  his  bows,  but  my  success 
was  only  partial,  because  of  the  somewhat 
greater  homage  paid  to  the  immortals  than  to 
the  mortals.  My  friend  explained.  He  said 
there  was  no  law  to  regulate  this  thing,  except 
that  most  powerful  of  all  laws,  custom.  Cus- 
tom had  created  these  varying  bows,  and  in 
time  they  had  become  easy  and  natural.    At 


6  CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

this  moment  he  dehvered  himself  of  a  very  pro- 
foimd  salute,  and  then  said,  "Now  there's  a 
man  who  began  Hfe  as  a  shoemaker's  appren- 
tice, and  without  education;  now  he  swings 
twenty-two  mortal  votes  and  two  immortal 
ones;  he  expects  to  pass  a  high-school  exami- 
nation this  year  and  climb  a  couple  of  votes 
higher  among  the  immortals;  mighty  valuable 
citizen." 

By  and  by  my  friend  met  a  venerable  per- 
sonage, and  not  only  made  him  a  most  elabo- 
rate bow,  but  also  took  off  his  hat.  I  took  off 
mine,  too,  with  a  mysterious  awe.  I  was  be- 
ginning to  be  infected. 

"What  grandee  is  that?" 

"That  is  our  most  illustrious  astronomer. 
He  hasn't  any  money,  but  is  fearfully  learned. 
Nine  immortals  is  his  poHtical  weight!  He 
would  swing  a  hundred  and  fifty  votes  if  our 
system  were  perfect." 

"Is  there  any  altitude  of  mere  moneyed 
grandeur  that  you  take  off  your  hat  to?" 

"No.   Nine  immortal  votes  is  the  only  power 


CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR  7 

we  uncover  for — ^that  is,  in  civil  life.  Very 
great  officials  receive  that  mark  of  homage,  of 
com-se." 

It  was  common  to  hear  people  admiringly 
mention  men  who  had  begun  life  on  the  lower 
levels  and  in  time  achieved  great  voting-power. 
It  was  also  common  to  hear  youths  planning  a 
future  of  ever  so  many  votes  for  themselves.  I 
heard  shrewd  mammas  speak  of  certain  young 
men  as  good  "catches"  because  they  possessed 
such-and-such  a  number  of  votes.  I  knew  of 
more  than  one  case  where  an  heiress  was  mar- 
ried to  a  youngster  who  had  but  one  vote;  the 
argument  being  that  he  was  gifted  with  such 
excellent  parts  that  in  time  he  would  acquire  a 
good  voting  strength,  and  perhaps  in  the  long 
run  be  able  to  outvote  his  wife,  if  he  had 
luck. 

Competitive  examinations  were  the  rule  and 
in  all  official  grades.  I  remarked  that  the  ques- 
tions asked  the  candidates  were  wild,  intricate, 
and  often  required  a  sort  of  knowledge  not 
needed  in  the  office  sought. 


8  CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

"Can  a  fool  or  an  ignoramus  answer  them?" 
asked  the  person  I  was  talking  with. 

"Certainly  not." 

"Well,  you  will  not  find  any  fools  or  igno- 
ramuses among  our  officials." 

I  felt  rather  cornered,  but  made  shift  to 
say — 

"But  these  questions  cover  a  good  deal  more 
ground  than  is  necessary." 

"No  matter;  if  candidates  can  answer  these 
it  is  tolerably  fair  evidence  that  they  can  an- 
swer nearly  any  other  question  you  choose  to 
ask  them." 

There  were  some  things  in  Gondour  which 
one  could  not  shut  his  eyes  to.  One  was,  that 
ignorance  and  incompetence  had  no  place  in 
the  government.  Brains  and  property  man- 
aged the  state.  A  candidate  for  office  must 
have  marked  ability,  education,  and  high 
character,  or  he  stood  no  sort  of  chance  of  elec- 
tion. If  a  hod-carrier  possessed  these,  he  could 
succeed;  but  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  a  hod- 
carrier  could  not  elect  him,  as  in  previous  times. 


CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR  9 

It  was  now  a  very  great  honour  to  be  in  the 
parhament  or  in  office;  under  the  old  system 
such  distinction  had  only  brought  suspicion 
upon  a  man  and  made  him  a  helpless  mark  for 
newspaper  contempt  and  scurrility.  Officials 
did  not  need  to  steal  now,  their  salaries  being 
vast  in  comparison  with  the  pittances  paid  in 
the  days  when  parliaments  were  created  by 
hod-carriers,  who  viewed  official  salaries  from 
a  hod-carrying  point  of  view  and  compelled 
that  view  to  be  respected  by  their  obsequious 
servants.  Justice  was  wisely  and  rigidly  ad- 
ministered; for  a  judge,  after  once  reaching  his 
place  through  the  specified  line  of  promotions, 
was  a  permanency  during  good  behaviour.  He 
was  not  obliged  to  modify  his  judgments  ac- 
cording to  the  effect  they  might  have  upon  the 
temper  of  a  reigning  political  party. 

The  country  was  mainly  governed  by  a  min- 
istry which  went  out  with  the  administration 
that  created  it.  This  was  also  the  case  with  the 
chiefs  of  the  great  departments.  Minor  offi- 
cials ascended  to  their  several  positions  through 


10       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

well-earned  promotions,  and  not  by  a  jump 
from  gin-mills  or  the  needy  families  and 
friends  of  members  of  parliament.  Good  be- 
haviour measured  their  terms  of  office. 

The  head  of  the  government,  the  Grand 
Caliph,  was  elected  for  a  term  of  twenty  years. 
I  questioned  the  wisdom  of  this.  I  was  an- 
swered that  he  could  do  no  harm,  since  the  min- 
istry and  the  parliament  governed  the  land, 
and  he  was  liable  to  impeachment  for  miscon- 
duct. This  great  office  had  twice  been  ably 
filled  by  women,  women  as  aptly  fitted  for  it  as 
some  of  the  sceptred  queens  of  history. 
Members  of  the  cabinet,  under  many  adminis- 
trations, had  been  women. 

I  found  that  the  pardoning  power  was 
lodged  in  a  court  of  pardons,  consisting  of  sev- 
eral great  judges.  Under  the  old  regime,  this 
important  power  was  vested  in  a  single  offi- 
cial, and  he  usually  took  care  to  have  a  general 
jail  dehvery  in  time  for  the  next  election. 

I  inquired  about  pubhc  schools.  There  were 
plenty  of  them,  and  of  free  colleges  too.     I 


CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR       11 

inquired  about  compulsory  education.  This 
was  received  with  a  smile,  and  the  remark — 

"When  a  man's  child  is  able  to  make  himself 
powerful  and  honoured  according  to  the 
amount  of  education  he  acquires,  don't  you 
suppose  that  that  parent  will  apply  the  com- 
pulsion himself?  Our  free  schools  and  free 
colleges  require  no  law  to  fill  them." 

There  was  a  loving  pride  of  country  about 
this  person's  way  of  speaking  which  annoyed 
me.  I  had  long  been  unused  to  the  sound  of  it 
in  my  own.  The  Gondour  national  airs  were 
forever  dinning  in  my  ears;  therefore  I  was 
glad  to  leave  that  country  and  come  back  to 
my  dear  native  land,  where  one  never  hears  that 
sort  of  music. 


A  MEMORY, 

WHEN  I  say  that  I  never  knew 
my  austere  father  to  be  enam- 
oured of  but  one  poem  in  all 
the  long  half  century  that  he 
lived,  persons  who  knew  him  will  easily  believe 
me ;  when  I  say  that  I  have  never  composed  but 
one  poem  in  all  the  long  third  of  a  century  that 
I  have  lived,  persons  who  know  me  will  be 
sincerely  grateful ;  and  finally,  when  I  say  that 
the  poem  which  I  composed  was  not  the  one 
which  my  father  was  enamoured  of,  persons 
who  may  have  known  us  both  will  not  need  to 
have  this  truth  shot  into  them  with  a  moun- 
tain howitzer  before  they  can  receive  it.  My 
father  and  I  were  always  on  the  most  distant 
terms  when  I  was  a  boy — a  sort  of  armed 
neutrality  so  to  speak.  At  irregular  intervals 
this  neutrality  was  broken,  and  suffering  en- 
sued; but  I  will  be  candid  enough  to  say  that 

12 


A    MEMORY  13 


the  breaking  and  the  suffering  were  always 
divided  up  with  strict  impartiahty  between  us 
— which  is  to  say,  my  father  did  the  breaking, 
and  I  did  the  suffering.  As  a  general  thing 
I  was  a  backward,  cautious,  unadventurous 
boy;  but  I  once  jumped  off  a  two-story  table; 
another  time  I  gave  an  elephant  a  "plug"  of 
tobacco  and  retired  without  waiting  for  an 
answer;  and  still  another  time  I  pretended  to 
be  talking  in  my  sleep,  and  got  off  a  portion 
of  a  very  wretched  original  conundrimi  in  the 
hearing  of  my  father.  Let  us  not  pry  into  the 
result ;  it  was  of  no  consequence  to  any  one  but 
me. 

But  the  poem  I  have  referred  to  as  attract- 
ing my  father's  attention  and  achieving  his 
favour  was  "Hiawatha."  Some  man  who 
courted  a  sudden  and  awful  death  presented 
him  an  early  copy,  and  I  never  lost  faith  in 
my  own  senses  until  I  saw  him  sit  down  and  go 
to  reading  it  in  cold  blood — saw  him  open  the 
book,  and  heard  him  read  these  following  lines, 
with  the  same  inflectionless  judicial  frigidity 


14       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

with  which  he  always  read  his  charge  to  the 
jury,  or  administered  an  oath  to  a  witness: 

Take  your  bow,  O  Hiawatha, 
Take  your  arrows,  jasper-headed. 
Take  your  war-club,   Puggawaugun, 
And  your  mittens,  Minjekahwan, 
And  your  birch  canoe  for  sailing, 
And  the  oil  of  Mishe-Nama." 

Presently  my  father  took  out  of  his  breast 
pocket  an  imposing  "Warranty  Deed,"  and 
fixed  his  eyes  upon  it  and  dropped  into  medita- 
tion. I  knew  what  it  was.  A  Texan  lady  and 
gentleman  had  given  my  half-brother,  Orrin 
Johnson,  a  handsome  property  in  a  town  in  the 
North,  in  gratitude  to  him  for  having  saved 
their  lives  by  an  act  of  brilliant  heroism. 

By  and  by  my  father  looked  towards  me  and 
sighed.    Then  he  said: 

"If  I  had  such  a  son  as  this  poet,  here  were  a 
subject  worthier  than  the  traditions  of  these 
Indians." 

"If  you  please,  sir,  where?" 

"In  this  deed." 


A    MEMORY  15 


"Yes — in  this  very  deed,"  said  my  father, 
throwing  it  on  the  table.  "There  is  more 
poetry,  more  romance,  more  subhmity,  more 
splendid  imagery  hidden  away  in  that  homely 
docmnent  than  could  be  fomid  in  all  the  tradi- 
tions of  all  the  savages  that  hve." 

"Indeed,  sir?  Could  I — could  I  get  it  out, 
sir?  Could  I  compose  the  poem,  sir,  do  you 
think?" 

"You  I" 

I  wilted. 

Presently  my  father's  face  softened  some- 
what, and  he  said: 

"Go  and  try.  But  mind,  curb  folly.  No 
poetry  at  the  expense  of  truth.  Keep  strictly 
to  the  facts." 

I  said  I  would,  and  bowed  myseK  out,  and 
went  upstairs. 

"Hiawatha"  kept  droning  in  my  head — and 
so  did  my  father's  remarks  about  the  sublimity 
and  romance  hidden  in  my  subject,  and  also  his 
injunction  to  beware  of  wasteful  and  exuber- 
ant fancy.     I  noticed,  just  here,  that  I  had 


16       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC   OF   GONDOUR 

heedlessly  brought  the  deed  away  with  me ;  now 
at  this  moment  came  to  me  one  of  those  rare 
moods  of  daring  recklessness,  such  as  I  re- 
ferred to  a  while  ago.  Without  another 
thought,  and  in  plain  defiance  of  the  fact 
that  I  knew  my  father  meant  me  to  write 
the  romantic  story  of  my  half-brother's  ad- 
venture and  subsequent  good  fortune,  I  ven- 
tured to  heed  merely  the  letter  of  his  remarks 
and  ignore  their  spirit.  I  took  the  stupid 
"Warranty  Deed"  itself  and  chopped  it  up 
into  Hiawathian  blank  verse  without  altering 
or  leaving  out  three  words,  and  without  trans- 
posing six.  It  required  loads  of  courage  to  go 
downstairs  and  face  my  father  with  my  per- 
formance, I  started  three  or  four  times  before 
I  finally  got  my  pluck  to  where  it  would  stick. 
But  at  last  I  said  I  would  go  down  and  read 
it  to  him  if  he  threw  me  over  the  church  for  it. 
I  stood  up  to  begin,  and  he  told  me  to  come 
closer.  I  edged  up  a  little,  but  still  left  as 
much  neutral  ground  between  us  as  I  thought 
he  would  stand.    Then  I  began.    It  would  be 


A    MEMORY  17 


useless  for  me  to  try  to  tell  what  conflicting 
emotions  expressed  themselves  upon  his  face, 
nor  how  they  grew  more  and  more  intense,  as 
I  proceeded ;  nor  how  a  fell  darkness  descended 
upon  his  countenance,  and  he  began  to  gag  and 
swallow,  and  his  hands  began  to  work  and 
twitch,  as  I  reeled  off  Hne  after  line,  with  the 
strength  ebbing  out  of  me,  and  my  legs  trem- 
bling under  me : 

THE  STORY  OF  A  GALLANT  DEED 

THIS  INDENTURE,  made  the  tenth 
Day  of  November,  in  the  year 
Of  our  Lord  one  thousand  eight 
Hundred  six-and-fifty. 

Between  Joanna  S.  E.  Gray 
And  Philip  Gray,  her  husband, 
Of  Salem  City  in  the  State 
Of  Texas,  of  the  first  part, 

And  O.  B.  Johnson,  of  the  town 
Of  Austin,  ditto,  WITNESSETH: 
That  said  party  of  first  part. 
For  and  in  consideration 


18       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

Of  the  sum  of  Twenty  Thousand 

Dollars,  lawful  money  of 

The  U.  S.  of  Americay, 

To  them  in  hand  now  paid  by  said 

Party  of  the  second  part, 

The  due  receipt  whereof  is  here- 

By  confessed  and  acknowledg-ed 

Having    Granted,    Bargained,    Sold,    Remised, 

Released  and  Aliened  and  Conveyed, 
Confirmed,  and  by  these  presents  do 
Grant  and  Bargain,  Sell,  Remise, 
Alien,  Release,  Convey,  and  Con- 
Firm  unto  the  said  aforesaid 
Party  of  the  second  part. 
And  to  his  heirs  and  assigns 
Forever  and  ever  ALL 

That  certain  lot  or  parcel  of 
LAND  situate  in  city  of 
Dunkirk,  County  of  Chautauqua, 
And  likewise  furthermore  in  York  State 

Bounded  and  described,  to-wit. 
As  follows,  herein,  namely: 
BEGINNING  at  the  distance  of 
A  hundred  two-and-forty  feet, 


A    MEMORY  19 


North-half-east,  north-east-by  north, 
East-north-east  and  northerly 
Of  the  northerly  line  of  Mulligan  street 
On  the  westerly  line  of  Brannigan  street, 

And  running  thence  due  northerly 
On  Brannigan  street  200  feet, 
Thence  at  right  angles  westerly, 
North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west, 

West-and-by-north,  north-west-by-west, 
About — 

I  kind  of  dodged,  and  the  boot- jack  broke 
the  looking-glass.  I  could  have  waited  to  see 
what  became  of  the  other  missiles  if  I  had 
wanted  to,  but  I  took  no  interest  in  such  things. 


INTRODUCTORY  TO 
"MEMORANDA" 

IN  taking  upon  myself  the  burden  of  edit- 
ing a  department  in  The  Galaxy  maga- 
zine, I  have  been  actuated  by  a  conviction 
that  I  was  needed,  ahnost  imperatively, 
in  this  particular  field  of  literature.  I  have 
long  felt  that  while  the  magazine  literature  of 
the  day  had  much  to  recommend  it,  it  yet 
lacked  stability,  solidity,  weight.  It  seemed 
plain  to  me  that  too  much  space  was  given  to 
poetry  and  romance,  and  not  enough  to  statis- 
tics and  agriculture.  This  defect  it  shall  be 
my  earnest  endeavour  to  remedy.  If  I  succeed, 
the  simple  consciousness  that  I  have  done  a 
good  deed  will  be  a  sufficient  reward.* 

In  this  department  of  mine  the  pubHc  may 
always  rely  upon  finding  exhaustive  statistical 
tables  concerning  the  finances  of  the  country, 

*  Together  with  salary. 
20 


INTRODUCTORY  TO  "MEMORANDA"  21 

the  ratio  of  births  and  deaths,  the  percentage  of 
increase  of  population,  etc.,  etc. — in  a  word, 
everything  in  the  reahn  of  statistics  that  can 
make  existence  bright  and  beautiful. 

Also,  in  my  department  will  always  be  found 
elaborate  condensations  of  the  Patent  Office 
Reports,  wherein  a  faithful  endeavour  will  at 
all  times  be  made  to  strip  the  nutritious  facts 
bare  of  that  effulgence  of  imagination  and  sub- 
limity of  diction  which  too  often  mar  the  ex- 
cellence of  those  great  works.* 

In  my  department  will  always  be  found 
ample  excerpts  from  those  able  dissertations 
upon  Political  Economy  which  I  have  for  a 
long  time  been  contributing  to  a  great  metro- 
pohtan  journal,  and  which,  for  reasons  utterly 
incomprehensible  to  me,  another  party  has 
chosen  to  usurp  the  credit  of  composing. 

And,  finally,  I  call  attention  with  pride  to 
the  fact  that  in  my  department  of  the  magazine 


*  N.  B. — No  other  magazine  in  the  country  makes 
a  specialty  of  the  Patent  Office  Reports. 


22       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

the  farmer  will  always  find  full  market  reports, 
and  also  complete  instructions  about  farming, 
even  from  the  grafting  of  the  seed  to  the  har- 
rowing of  the  matured  crop.  I  shall  throw  a 
pathos  into  the  subject  of  Agriculture  that  will 
surprise  and  dehght  the  world. 

Such  is  my  programme ;  and  I  am  persuaded 
that  by  adhering  to  it  with  fidelity  I  shall  suc- 
ceed in  materially  changing  the  character  of 
this  magazine.  Therefore  I  am  emboldened  to 
ask  the  assistance  and  encouragement  of  all 
whose  sympathies  are  with  Progress  and  Re- 
form. 

In  the  other  departments  of  the  magazine 
will  be  found  poetry,  tales,  and  other  frothy 
trifles,  and  to  these  the  reader  can  turn  for 
relaxation  from  time  to  time,  and  thus  guard 
against  overstraining  the  powers  of  his  mind. 

M.  T. 

P.  S. — 1.  I  have  not  sold  out  of  the  "Buf- 
falo Express,"  and  shall  not;  neither  shall  I 
stop  writing  for  it.  This  remark  seems  neces- 
sary in  a  business  point  of  view. 


INTRODUCTORY  TO  "MEMORANDA"  23 

2.  These  Memoranda  are  not  a  "humorous" 
department.  I  would  not  conduct  an  exclu- 
sively and  professedly  humorous  department 
for  any  one.  I  would  always  prefer  to  have 
the  privilege  of  printing  a  serious  and  sensible 
remark,  in  case  one  occurred  to  me,  without  the 
reader's  feeling  obUged  to  consider  himself  out- 
raged. We  cannot  keep  the  same  mood  day 
after  day.  I  am  hable,  some  day,  to  want  to 
print  my  opinion  on  jurisprudence,  or  Ho- 
meric poetry,  or  international  law,  and  I  shall 
do  it.  It  will  be  of  small  consequence  to  me 
whether  the  reader  survive  or  not.  I  shall 
never  go  straining  after  jokes  when  in  a  cheer- 
less mood,  so  long  as  the  unhackneyed  subject 
of  international  law  is  open  to  me.  I  will  leave 
all  that  straining  to  people  who  edit  profess- 
edly and  inexorably  "humorous"  departments 
and  publications. 

3.  I  have  chosen  the  general  title  of  Mem- 
oranda for  this  department  because  it  is  plain 
and  simple,  and  makes  no  fraudulent  prom- 
ises.   I  can  print  under  it  statistics,  hotel  ar- 


24       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC   OF   GONDOUR 

rivals,  or  anything  that  comes  handy,  without 
violating  faith  with  the  reader. 

4.  Puns  cannot  be  allowed  a  place  in  this  de- 
partment. Inoffensive  ignorance,  benignant 
stupidity,  and  unostentatious  imbecility  will 
always  be  welcomed  and  cheerfully  accorded 
a  corner,  and  even  the  feeblest  humour  will  be 
admitted,  when  we  can  do  no  better ;  but  no  cir- 
cumstances, however  dismal,  will  ever  be  con- 
sidered a  sufficient  excuse  for  the  admission  of 
that  last  and  saddest  evidence  of  intellectual 
poverty,  the  Pun.  M.  T. 


I 


ABOUT  SMELLS 

N  a  recent  issue  of  the  "Independent,"  the 
Rev.  T.  De  Witt  Tahnage,  of  Brooklyn^ 
has  the  following  utterance  on  the  sub- 
ject of  "SmeUs": 


I  have  a  good  Christian  friend  who,  if  he  sat  in  the 
front  pew  in  church,  and  a  working  man  should  enter 
the  door  at  the  other  end,  would  smell  him  instantly. 
My  friend  is  not  to  blame  for  the  sensitiveness  of  his 
nose,  any  more  than  you  would  flog  a  pointer  for  be- 
ing keener  on  the  scent  than  a  stupid  watch  dog. 
The  fact  is,  if  you  had  all  the  churches  free,  by 
reason  of  the  mixing  up  of  the  common  people  with 
the  uncommon,  you  would  keep  one-half  of  Christen- 
dom sick  at  their  stomach.  If  you  are  going  to  kill 
the  church  thus  with  bad  smells,  I  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  this  work  of  evangelization. 

We  have  reason  to  believe  that  there  will  be 
labouring  men  in  heaven ;  and  also  a  number  of 
negroes,  and  Esquimaux,  and  Terra  del 
Fuegans,  and  Arabs,  and  a  few  Indians,  and 

25 


26       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

possibly  even  some  Spaniards  and  Portuguese. 
All  things  are  possible  with  God.  We  shall 
have  all  these  sorts  of  people  in  heaven;  but, 
alas!  in  getting  them  we  shall  lose  the  society 
of  Dr.  Talmage.  Which  is  to  say,  we  shall  lose 
the  company  of  one  who  could  give  more  real 
"tone"  to  celestial  society  than  any  other  con- 
tribution Brooklyn  could  furnish.  And  what 
would  eternal  happiness  be  without  the  Doc- 
tor? Blissful,  unquestionably — we  know  that 
well  enough — but  would  it  be  distingue,  would 
it  be  recherche  without  him?  St.  Matthew 
without  stockings  or  sandals ;  St.  Jerome  bare- 
headed, and  with  a  coarse  brown  blanket  robe 
dragging  the  ground;  St.  Sebastian  with 
scarcely  any  raiment  at  all — these  we  should 
see,  and  should  enjoy  seeing  them;  but  would 
we  not  miss  a  spike-tailed  coat  and  kids,  and 
turn  away  regretfully,  and  say  to  parties  from 
the  Orient:  "These  are  well  enough,  but  you 
ought  to  see  Talmage  of  Brooklyn."  I  fear 
me  that  in  the  better  world  we  shall  not  even 
have  Dr.  Talmage's  "good  Christian  friend." 


ABOUT   SMELLS  27 

For  if  he  were  sitting  under  the  glory  of  the 
Throne,  and  the  keeper  of  the  keys  admitted 
a  Benjamin  Frankhn  or  other  labouring  man, 
that  "friend,"  with  his  fine  natural  powers  in- 
finitely augmented  by  emancipation  from 
hampering  flesh,  would  detect  him  with  a  single 
sniff,  and  immediately  take  his  hat  and  ask  to 
be  excused. 

To  all  outward  seeming,  the  Rev.  T.  De 
Witt  Talmage  is  of  the  same  material  as  that 
used  in  the  construction  of  his  early  prede- 
cessors in  the  ministry;  and  yet  one  feels  that 
there  must  be  a  difference  somewhere  between 
him  and  the  Saviour's  first  disciples.  It  may 
be  because  here,  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Dr. 
T.  has  had  advantages  which  Paul  and  Peter 
and  the  others  could  not  and  did  not  have. 
There  was  a  lack  of  polish  about  them,  and  a 
looseness  of  etiquette,  and  a  want  of  exclusive- 
ness,  which  one  cannot  help  noticing.  They 
healed  the  very  beggars,  and  held  intercourse 
with  people  of  a  villanous  odour  every  day.  If 
the  subject  of  these  remarks  had  been  chosen 


28       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

among  the  original  Twelve  Apostles,  he  would 
not  have  associated  with  the  rest,  because  he 
could  not  have  stood  the  fishy  smell  of  some  of 
his  comrades  who  came  from  around  the  Sea 
of  Galilee.  He  would  have  resigned  his  com- 
mission with  some  such  remark  as  he  makes  in 
the  extract  quoted  above:  "Master,  if  thou  art 
going  to  kill  the  church  thus  with  bad  smells,  I 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  this  work  of  evan- 
gehzation."  He  is  a  disciple,  and  makes  that 
remark  to  the  Master;  the  only  difference  is, 
that  he  makes  it  in  the  nineteenth  instead  of  the 
first  century. 

Is  there  a  choir  in  Mr.  T.'s  church?  And 
does  it  ever  occur  that  they  have  no  better 
manners  than  to  sing  that  hymn  which  is  so 
suggestive  of  labourers  and  mechanics : 

"Son   of   the   Carpenter!   receive 
This  humble  work  of  mine?" 

Now,  can  it  be  possible  that  in  a  handful  of 
centuries  the  Christian  character  has  fallen 
away  from  an  imposing  heroism  that  scorned 


ABOUT   SMELLS  29 

even  the  stake,  the  cross,  and  the  axe,  to  a  poor 
little  effeminacy  that  withers  and  wilts  under 
an  unsavoury  smell?  We  are  not  prepared  to 
beheve  so,  the  reverend  Doctor  and  his  friend 
to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 


A  COUPLE  OF  SAD  EXPERIENCES 

WHEN  I  published  a  squib  re- 
cently in  which  I  said  I  was 
going  to  edit  an  Agricultural 
Department  in  this  magazine, 
I  certainly  did  not  desire  to  deceive  anybody. 
I  had  not  the  remotest  desire  to  play  upon  any 
one's  confidence  with  a  practical  joke,  for  he 
is  a  pitiful  creature  indeed  who  will  degrade 
the  dignity  of  his  humanity  to  the  contriving 
of  the  witless  inventions  that  go  by  that  name. 
I  purposely  wrote  the  thing  as  absurdly  and  as 
extravagantly  as  it  could  be  written,  in  order 
to  be  sure  and  not  mislead  hurried  or  heed- 
less readers:  for  I  spoke  of  launching  a  tri- 
umphal barge  upon  a  desert,  and  planting  a 
tree  of  prosperity  in  a  mine — a  tree  whose 
fragrance  should  slake  the  thirst  of  the  naked, 
and  whose  branches  should  spread  abroad  till 
they  washed  the  shores  of,  etc.,  etc.    I  thought 

30 


A    COUPLE    OF   SAD   EXPERIENCES        31 

that  manifest  lunacy  like  that  would  protect 
the  reader.  But  to  make  assurance  absolute, 
and  show  that  I  did  not  and  could  not  seriously- 
mean  to  attempt  an  Agricultural  Department, 
I  stated  distinctly  in  my  postscript  that  I  did 
not  know  anything  about  Agriculture.  But 
alas !  right  there  is  where  I  made  my  worst  mis- 
take— for  that  remark  seems  to  have  recom- 
mended my  proposed  Agriculture  more  than 
anything  else.  It  lets  a  little  light  in  on  me, 
and  I  fancy  I  perceive  that  the  farmers  feel  a 
little  bored,  sometimes,  by  the  oracular  pro- 
fundity of  agricultural  editors  who  "know  it 
all."  In  fact,  one  of  my  correspondents  sug- 
gests this  (for  that  unhappy  squib  has  deluged 
me  with  letters  about  potatoes,  and  cabbages, 
and  hominy,  and  vermicelli,  and  maccaroni, 
and  all  the  other  fruits,  cereals,  and  vegetables 
that  ever  grew  on  earth ;  and  if  I  get  done  an- 
swering questions  about  the  best  way  of  rais- 
ing these  things  before  I  go  raving  crazy,  I 
shall  be  thankful,  and  shall  never  write  ob- 
scurely for  fun  any  more) . 


32       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC   OF  GONDOUR 

Shall  I  tell  the  real  reason  why  I  have  unin- 
tentionally succeeded  in  fooling  so  many  peo- 
ple? It  is  because  some  of  them  only  read  a 
little  of  the  squib  I  wrote  and  jumped  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  serious,  and  the  rest  did 
not  read  it  at  all,  but  heard  of  my  agricultural 
venture  at  second-hand.  Those  cases  I  could 
not  guard  against,  of  course.  To  write  a  bur- 
lesque so  wild  that  its  pretended  facts  will  not 
be  accepted  in  perfect  good  faith  by  somebody, 
is  very  nearly  an  impossible  thing  to  do.  It  is 
because,  in  some  instances,  the  reader  is  a  per- 
son who  never  tries  to  deceive  anybody  him- 
self, and  therefore  is  not  expecting  any  one  to 
wantonly  practise  a  deception  upon  Mm;  and 
in  this  case  the  only  person  dishonoured  is  the 
man  who  wrote  the  burlesque.  In  other  in- 
stances the  "nub'*  or  moral  of  the  burlesque — 
if  its  object  be  to  enforce  a  truth — escapes 
notice  in  the  superior  glare  of  something  in  the 
body  of  the  burlesque  itself.  And  very  often 
this  "moral"  is  tagged  on  at  the  bottom,  and 
the  reader,  not  knowing  that  it  is  the  key  of  the 


A    COUPLE    OF    SAD    EXPERIENCES         33 

whole  thing  and  the  only  important  paragraph 
in  the  article,  tranquilly  turns  up  his  nose  at  it 
and  leaves  it  unread.  One  can  deliver  a  satire 
with  telling  force  through  the  insidious  me- 
dium of  a  travesty,  if  he  is  careful  not  to  over- 
whelm the  satire  with  the  extraneous  interest 
of  the  travesty,  and  so  bury  it  from  the  read- 
er's sight  and  leave  him  a  joked  and  defrauded 
victim,  when  the  honest  intent  was  to  add  to 
either  his  knowledge  or  his  wisdom.  I  have 
had  a  deal  of  experience  in  burlesques  and  their 
unfortunate  aptness  to  deceive  the  public,  and 
this  is  why  I  tried  hard  to  make  that  agricul- 
tural one  so  broad  and  so  perfectly  palpable 
that  even  a  one-eyed  potato  could  see  it;  and 
yet,  as  I  speak  the  solemn  truth,  it  fooled  one 
of  the  ablest  agricultural  editors  in  America ! 


DAN  MURPHY 

ONE  of  the  saddest  things  that  ever 
came  under  my  notice  (said  the 
banker's  clerk)  was  there  in  Corn- 
ing, during  the  war.  Dan  Murphy 
enlisted  as  a  private,  and  fought  very  bravely. 
The  boys  all  liked  him,  and  when  a  wound  by 
and  by  weakened  him  down  till  carrying  a 
musket  was  too  heavy  work  for  him,  they 
clubbed  together  and  fixed  him  up  as  a  sutler. 
He  made  money  then,  and  sent  it  always  to  his 
wife  to  bank  for  him.  She  was  a  washer  and 
ironer,  and  knew  enough  by  hard  experience 
to  keep  money  when  she  got  it.  She  didn't 
waste  a  penny.  On  the  contrary,  she  began  to 
get  miserly  as  her  bank  account  grew.  She 
grieved  to  part  with  a  cent,  poor  creature,  for 
twice  in  her  hard-working  hfe  she  had  known 
what  it  was  to  be  hungry,  cold,  friendless,  sick, 
and  without  a  dollar  in  the  world,  and  she  had 

34 


DAN    MURPHY  35 

a  haunting  dread  of  suffering  so  again.  Well, 
at  last  Dan  died ;  and  the  boys,  in  testimony  of 
their  esteem  and  respect  for  him,  telegraphed 
to  Mrs.  Murphy  to  know  if  she  would  hke  to 
have  him  embalmed  and  sent  home,  when  you 
know  the  usual  custom  was  to  dump  a  poor 
devil  hke  him  into  a  shallow  hole,  and  then 
inform  -his  friends  what  had  become  of  him. 
Mrs.  Murphy  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  it 
would  only  cost  two  or  three  dollars  to  embalm 
her  dead  husband,  and  so  she  telegraphed 
"Yes."  It  was  at  the  "wake"  that  the  bill  for 
embalming  arrived  and  was  presented  to  the 
widow.  She  uttered  a  wild,  sad  wail,  that 
pierced  every  heart,  and  said:  "Sivinty-foive 
dollars  for  stooffin'  Dan,  bhster  their  sowls! 
Did  thim  divils  suppose  I  was  goin'  to  stairt  a 
Museim,  that  I'd  be  dalin'  in  such  expinsive 
curiassities !" 

The  banker's  clerk  said  there  was  not  a  dry 
eye  in  the  house. 


THE  "TOURNAMENT"  IN  A.  D.  1870 


L 


ATELY  there  appeared  an  item  to 
this  effect,  and  the  same  went  the 
customary  universal  round  of  the 
press : 


A  telegraph  station  has  just  been  established  upon 
the  traditional  site  of  the  Garden  of  Eden. 

As  a  companion  to  that,  nothing  fits  so  aptly 
and  so  perfectly  as  this : 

Brooklyn  has  revived  the  knightly  tournament  of 
the  Middle  Ages. 

It  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  the  most  startling, 
the  idea  of  that  highest  achievement  of  human 
genius  and  intelligence,  the  telegraph,  prating 
away  about  the  practical  concerns  of  the 
world's  daily  life  in  the  heart  and  home  of 
ancient  indolence,  ignorance,  and  savagery,  or 
the  idea  of  that  happiest  expression  of  the 
brag,  vanity,  and  mock-heroics  of  our  ances- 

36 


THE   "tournament"  IN  A.  D.   1870  37 

tors,  the  "tournament,"  coming  out  of  its  grave 
to  flaunt  its  tinsel  trumpery  and  perform  its 
"chivalrous"  absurdities  in  the  high  noon  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  under  the  patron- 
age of  a  great,  broad-awake  city  and  an  ad- 
vanced civilisation. 

A  "tournament"  in  Lynchburg  is  a  thing 
easily  within  the  comprehension  of  the  average 
mind ;  but  no  commonly  gifted  person  can  con- 
ceive of  such  a  spectacle  in  Brooklyn  without 
straining  his  powers.  Brooklyn  is  part  and 
parcel  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and  there  is 
hardly  romance  enough  in  the  entire  metropolis 
to  re-supply  a  Virginia  "knight"  with  "chiv- 
alry," in  case  he  happened  to  run  out  of  it.  Let 
the  reader  calmly  and  dispassionately  picture 
to  himself  "lists" — in  Brooklyn;  heralds,  pur- 
suivants, pages,  garter  king-at-arms — in 
Brooklyn;  the  marshalling  of  the  fantastic 
hosts  of  "chivalry"  in  slashed  doublets,  velvet 
trunks,  ruffles,  and  plumes — in  Brooklyn; 
mounted  on  omnibus  and  livery-stable  patri- 
archs, promoted,  and  referred  to  in  cold  blood 


38       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

as  "steeds,"  "destriers,*'  and  "chargers,"  and 
divested  of  their  friendly,  humble  names — 
these  meek  old  "Jims"  and  "Bobs"  and  "Char- 
leys," and  renamed  "Mohammed,"  "Buce- 
phalus," and  "Saladin" — in  Brooklyn; 
mounted  thus,  and  armed  with  swords  and 
shields  and  wooden  lances,  and  cased  in  paste- 
board hauberks,  morions,  greaves,  and  gaunt- 
lets, and  addressed  as  "Sir"  Smith,  and  "Sir" 
Jones,  and  bearing  such  titled  grandeurs  as 
"The  Disinherited  Knight,"  the  "Knight  of 
Shenandoah,"  the  "Knight  of  the  Blue  Ridge," 
the  "Knight  of  Maryland,"  and  the  "Knight  of 
the  Secret  Sorrow" — in  Brooklyn;  and  at  the 
toot  of  the  horn  charging  fiercely  upon  a  help- 
less ring  hung  on  a  post,  and  prodding  at  it  in- 
trepidly with  their  wooden  sticks,  and  by  and 
by  skewering  it  and  cavorting  back  to  the 
judges'  stand  covered  with  glory — ^this  in 
Brooklyn ;  and  each  noble  success  hke  this  duly 
and  promptly  announced  by  an  applauding 
toot  from  the  herald's  horn,  and  "the  band 
playing  three  bars  of  an  old  circus  tune" — all 


THE  "tournament"  IN  A.  D.   1870  39 

in  Brooklj^n,  in  broad  daylight.  And  let  the 
reader  remember,  and  also  add  to  his  picture, 
as  follows,  to  wit :  when  the  show  was  all  over, 
the  party  who  had  shed  the  most  blood 
and  overturned  and  hacked  to  pieces  the  most 
knights,  or  at  least  had  prodded  the  most  muf- 
fin-rings, was  accorded  the  ancient  privilege  of 
naming  and  crowning  the  Queen  of  Love  and 
Beauty — which  naming  had  in  reality  been 
done  for  him  by  the  "cut-and-dried"  process, 
and  long  in  advance,  by  a  committee  of  ladies, 
but  the  crowning  he  did  in  person,  though  suf- 
fering from  loss  of  blood,  and  then  was  taken 
to  the  county  hospital  on  a  shutter  to  have  his 
wounds  dressed — these  curious  things  all  oc- 
curring in  Brooklyn,  and  no  longer  ago  than 
one  or  two  yesterdays.  It  seems  impossible, 
and  yet  it  is  true. 

This  was  doubtless  the  first  appearance  of 
the  "toui'nament"  up  here  among  the  roUing- 
mills  and  factories,  and  will  probably  be  the 
last.  It  will  be  well  to  let  it  retire  permanently 
to  the  rural  districts  of  Virginia,  where,  it  is 


40       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

said,  the  fine  mailed  and  plumed,  noble- 
natured,  maiden-rescuing,  wrong-redressing, 
adventure-seeking  knight  of  romance  is  ac- 
cepted and  believed  in  by  the  peasantry  with 
pleasing  simplicity,  while  they  reject  with 
scorn  the  plain,  unpolished  verdict  whereby 
history  exposes  him  as  a  braggart,  a  ruffian,  a 
fantastic  vagabond,  and  an  ignoramus. 

All  romance  aside,  what  shape  would  our 
admiration  of  the  heroes  of  Ashby  de  la  Zouch 
be  likely  to  take,  in  this  practical  age,  if  those 
worthies  were  to  rise  up  and  come  here  and 
perform  again  the  chivalrous  deeds  of  that 
famous  passage  of  arms  ?  Nothing  but  a  New 
York  jury  and  the  insanity  plea  could  save 
them  from  hanging,  from  the  amiable  Bois- 
Guilbert  and  the  pleasant  Front-de-Boeuf 
clear  down  to  the  nameless  ruffians  that  entered 
the  riot  with  unpictured  shields  and  did  their 
first  murder  and  acquired  their  first  claim  to 
respect  that  day.  The  doings  of  the  so-called 
"chivalry"  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  absurd 
enough,  even  when  they  were  brutally  and 


THE    "tournament"    IN    A.    D.    1870    41 

bloodily  in  earnest,  and  when  their  surround- 
ings of  castles  and  donjons,  savage  land- 
scapes and  half-savage  peoples,  were  in 
keeping;  but  those  doings  gravely  reproduced 
with  tinsel  decorations  and  mock  pageantry, 
by  bucoHc  gentlemen  with  broomstick  lances, 
and  with  muffin-rings  to  represent  the  foe,  and 
all  in  the  midst  of  the  refinement  and  dignity  of 
a  carefully-developed  modern  civilisation,  is 
absurdity  gone  crazy. 

Now,  for  next  exhibition,  let  us  have  a  fine 
representation  of  one  of  those  chivalrous 
wholesale  butcheries  and  burnings  of  Jewish 
women  and  children,  which  the  crusading 
heroes  of  romance  used  to  indulge  in  in  their 
European  homes,  just  before  starting  to  the 
Holy  Land,  to  seize  and  take  to  their  protec- 
tion the  Sepulchre  and  defend  it  from  "pollu- 
tion." 


CURIOUS  RELIC  FOR  SALE 

"For  sale,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Fund  for  the  Re- 
lief of  the  Widows  and  Orphans  of  Deceased  Fire- 
men, a  Curious  Ancient  Bedouin  Pipe,  procured  at 
the  city  of  Endor  in  Palestine,  and  believed  to  have 
once  belonged  to  the  justly-renowned  Witch  of  En- 
dor.  Parties  desiring  to  examine  this  singular  relic 
with  a  view  to  purchasing,  can  do  so  by  calling  upon 
Daniel  S.,  119  and  121  William  street,  New  York." 

AS  per  advertisement  in  the  "Her- 
ald." A  curious  old  relic  indeed,  as 
I  had  a  good  personal  .right  to 
know.  In  a  single  instant  of  time, 
a  long  drawn  panorama  of  sights  and  scenes  in 
the  Holy  Land  flashed  through  my  memory — 
town  and  grove,  desert,  camp,  and  caravan 
clattering  after  each  other  and  disappearing, 
leaving  me  with  a  little  of  the  surprised  and 
dizzy  feeling  which  I  have  experienced  at  sun- 
dry times  when  a  long  express  train  has  over- 
taken me  at  some  quiet  curve  and  gone  whiz- 

42 


CURIOUS   RELIC    FOR   SALE  43 

zing,  car  by  car,  around  the  corner  and  out  of 
sight.  In  that  prohfic  instant  I  saw  again  all 
the  country  from  the  Sea  of  Galilee  and  Naz- 
areth clear  to  Jerusalem,  and  thence  over  the 
hills  of  Judea  and  through  the  Vale  of  Sharon 
to  Joppa,  down  by  the  ocean.  Leaving  out 
unimportant  stretches  of  country  and  details  of 
incident,  I  saw  and  experienced  the  following- 
described  matters  and  things.  Immediately 
three  years  fell  away  from  my  age,  and  a  van- 
ished time  was  restored  to  me — September, 
1867.  It  was  a  flaming  Oriental  day — this  one 
that  had  come  up  out  of  the  past  and  brought 
along  its  actors,  its  stage-properties,  and  scenic 
effects — and  our  party  had  just  ridden  through 
the  squalid  hive  of  human  vermin  which  still 
holds  the  ancient  Biblical  name  of  Endor;  I 
was  bringing  up  the  rear  on  my  grave  four- 
dollar  steed,  who  was  about  beginning  to  com- 
pose himself  for  his  usual  noon  nap.  My !  only 
fifteen  minutes  before  how  the  black,  mangy, 
nine-tenths  naked,  ten-tenths  filthy,  ignorant, 
bigoted,   besotted,   hungry,   lazy,   malignant, 


44       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

screeching,  crowding,  struggling,  wailing,  beg- 
ging, cursing,  hateful  spawn  of  the  original 
Witch  had  swarmed  out  of  the  caves  in  the 
rocks  and  the  holes  and  crevices  in  the  earth, 
and  blocked  our  horses'  way,  besieged  us,  threw 
themselves  in  the  animals'  path,  clung  to  their 
manes,  saddle-furniture,  and  tails,  asking,  be- 
seeching, demanding  "bucksheesh!  huchsheesh! 
bucksheesh!"  We  had  rained  small  copper 
Turkish  coins  among  them,  as  fugitives  fling 
coats  and  hats  to  pursuing  wolves,  and  then 
had  spurred  our  way  through  as  they  stopped 
to  scramble  for  the  largess.  I  was  fervently 
thankful  when  we  had  gotten  well  up  on  the 
desolate  hillside  and  outstripped  them  and  left 
them  jawing  and  gesticulating  in  the  rear. 
What  a  tempest  had  seemingly  gone  roaring 
and  crashing  by  me  and  left  its  dull  thunders 
pulsing  in  my  ears ! 

I  was  in  the  rear,  as  I  was  saying.  Our 
pack-mules  and  Arabs  were  far  ahead,  and 
Dan,  Jack,  Moult,  Davis,  Denny,  Church,  and 
Birch  (these  names  will  do  as  well  as  any  to 


CURIOUS    RELIC    FOR   SALE  45 

represent  the  boys)  were  following  close  after 
them.  As  my  horse  nodded  to  rest,  I  heard 
a  sort  of  panting  behind  me,  and  turned  and 
saw  that  a  tawny  youth  from  the  village  had 
overtaken  me — a  true  remnant  and  representa- 
tive of  his  ancestress  the  Witch — a  galvanised 
scurvy,  wrought  into  the  human  shape  and 
garnished  with  ophthalmia  and  leprous  scars — 
an  airy  creature  with  an  invisible  shirt-front 
that  reached  below  the  pit  of  his  stomach,  and 
no  other  clothing  to  speak  of  except  a  tobacco- 
pouch,  an  ammunition-pocket,  and  a  venerable 
gun,  which  was  long  enough  to  club  any  game 
with  that  came  within  shooting  distance,  but 
far  from  efficient  as  an  article  of  dress. 

I  thought  to  myself,  "Now  this  disease  with 
a  human  heart  in  it  is  going  to  shoot  me." 
I  smiled  in  derision  at  the  idea  of  a  Bedouin 
daring  to  touch  off  his  great-grandfather's 
rusty  gun  and  getting  his  head  blown  off  for 
his  pains.  But  then  it  occurred  to  me,  in  simple 
school-boy  language,  "Suppose  he  should  take 
dehberate  aim  and  'haul  off'  and  fetch  me  with 


46       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

the  butt-end  of  it?"  There  was  wisdom  in  that 
view  of  it,  and  I  stopped  to  parley.  I  found  he 
was  only  a  friendly  villain  who  wanted  a  trifle 
of  bucksheesh,  and  after  begging  what  he  could 
get  in  that  way,  was  perfectly  willing  to  trade 
off  everything  he  had  for  more.  I  believe  he 
would  have  parted  with  his  last  shirt  for  buck- 
sheesh if  he  had  had  one.  He  was  smoking  the 
"humbliest"  pipe  I  ever  saw — a  dingy,  funnel- 
shaped,  red-clay  thing,  streaked  and  grimed 
with  oil  and  tears  of  tobacco,  and  with  all  the 
different  kinds  of  dirt  there  are,  and  thirty  per 
cent,  of  them  peculiar  and  indigenous  to  Endor 
and  perdition.  And  rank  ?  I  never  smelt  any- 
thing like  it.  It  withered  a  cactus  that  stood 
lifting  its  prickly  hands  aloft  beside  the  trail. 
It  even  woke  up  my  horse.  I  said  I  would  take 
that.  It  cost  me  a  franc,  a  Russian  kopek,  a 
brass  button,  and  a  slate  pencil ;  and  my  spend- 
thrift lavishness  so  won  upon  the  son  of  the 
desert  that  he  passed  over  his  pouch  of  most 
unspeakably  villainous  tobacco  to  me  as  a  free 
gift.    What  a  pipe  it  was,  to  be  sure !    It  had  a 


CURIOUS    RELIC    FOR   SALE  47 

rude  brass-wire  cover  to  it,  and  a  little  coarse 
iron  chain  suspended  from  the  bowl,  with  an 
iron  splinter  attached  to  loosen  up  the  tobacco 
and  pick  your  teeth  with.  The  stem  looked 
like  the  half  of  a  slender  walking-stick  with  the 
bark  on. 

I  felt  that  this  pipe  had  belonged  to  the  orig- 
inal Witch  of  Endor  as  soon  as  I  saw  it ;  and  as 
soon  as  I  smelt  it,  I  knew  it.  Moreover,  I 
asked  the  Arab  cub  in  good  English  if  it  was 
not  so,  and  he  answered  in  good  Arabic  that  it 
was.  I  woke  up  my  horse  and  went  my  way, 
smoking.  And  presently  I  said  to  myself  re- 
flectively, "If  there  is  anything  that  could 
make  a  man  deliberately  assault  a  dying 
cripple,  I  reckon  may  be  an  unexpected  whiflp 
from  this  pipe  would  do  it."  I  smoked  along 
till  I  found  I  was  beginning  to  lie,  and  project 
murder,  and  steal  my  own  things  out  of  one 
pocket  and  hide  them  in  another;  and  then  I 
put  up  my  treasure,  took  off  my  spurs  and  put 
them  under  my  horse's  tail,  and  shortly  came 
tearing  through  our  caravan  like  a  hurricane. 


48       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

From  that  time  forward,  going  to  Jerusalem, 
the  Dead  Sea,  and  the  Jordan,  Bethany,  Beth- 
lehem, and  everywhere,  I  loafed  contentedly  in 
the  rear  and  enjoyed  my  infamous  pipe  and 
revelled  in  imaginary  villany.  But  at  the  end 
of  two  weeks  we  turned  our  faces  toward  the 
sea  and  journeyed  over  the  Judean  hills,  and 
through  rocky  defiles,  and  among  the  scenes 
that  Samson  knew  in  his  youth,  and  by  and  by 
we  touched  level  ground  just  at  night,  and 
trotted  off  cheerily  over  the  plain  of  Sharon. 
It  was  perfectly  jolly  for  three  hours,  and  we 
whites  crowded  along  together,  close  after  the 
chief  Arab  muleteer  (all  the  pack-animals  and 
the  other  Arabs  were  miles  in  the  rear ) ,  and  we 
laughed,  and  chatted,  and  argued  hotly  about 
Samson,  and  whether  suicide  was  a  sin  or  not, 
since  Paul  speaks  of  Samson  distinctly  as  be- 
ing saved  and  in  heaven.  But  by  and  by  the 
night  air,  and  the  duskiness,  and  the  weariness 
of  eight  hours  in  the  saddle,  began  to  tell,  and 
conversation  flagged  and  finalty  died  out 
utterly.    The  squeak-squeaking  of  the  saddles 


CURIOUS   RELIC    FOR   SALE  49 

grew  very  distinct;  occasionally  somebody 
sighed,  or  started  to  hum  a  tune  and  gave  it 
up;  now  and  then  a  horse  sneezed.  These 
things  only  emphasised  the  solemnity  and  the 
stillness.  Everybody  got  so  Hstless  that  for 
once  I  and  my  dreamer  found  ourselves  in  the 
lead.  It  was  a  glad,  new  sensation,  and  I 
longed  to  keep  the  place  forevermore.  Every 
little  stir  in  the  dingy  cavalcade  behind  made 
me  nervous.  Davis  and  I  were  riding  side  by 
side,  right  after  the  Arab.  About  11  o'clock 
it  had  become  really  chilly,  and  the  dozing  boys 
roused  up  and  began  to  inquire  how  far  it  was 
to  Ramlah  yet,  and  to  demand  that  the  Arab 
hurry  along  faster.  I  gave  it  up  then,  and  my 
heart  sank  within  me,  because  of  course  they 
would  come  up  to  scold  the  Arab.  I  knew  I 
had  to  take  the  rear  again.  In  my  sorrow  I 
unconsciously  took  to  my  pipe,  my  only  com- 
fort. As  I  touched  the  match  to  it  the  whole 
company  came  lumbering  up  and  crowding  my 
horse's  rump  and  flanks.  A  whiff  of  smoke 
drifted  back  over  my  shoulder,  and — ■ 


50       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

"The  suffering  Moses!" 

"Whew!" 

"By  George,  who  opened  that  graveyard?" 

"Boys,  that  Arab's  been  swallowing  some- 
thing dead!" 

Right  away  there  was  a  gap  behind  us. 
Whiff  after  whiff  sailed  airily  back,  and  each 
one  widened  the  breach.  Within  fifteen 
seconds  the  barking,  and  gasping,  and  sneez- 
ing, and  coughing  of  the  boys,  and  their  angry 
abuse  of  the  Arab  guide,  had  dwindled  to  a 
murmur,  and  Davis  and  I  were  alone  with  the 
leader.  Davis  did  not  know  what  the  matter 
was,  and  don't  to  this  day.  Occasionally  he 
caught  a  faint  film  of  the  smoke  and  fell  to 
scolding  at  the  Arab  and  wondering  how  long 
he  had  been  decaying  in  that  way.  Our  boys 
kept  on  dropping  back  further  and  further,  till 
at  last  they  were  only  in  hearing,  not  in  sight. 
And  every  time  they  started  gingerly  forward 
to  reconnoitre — or  shoot  the  Arab,  as  they  pro- 
posed to  do — I  let  them  get  within  good  fair 
range  of  my  rehc   (she  would  carry  seventy 


CURIOUS   RELIC    FOR   SALE  51 

yards  with  wonderful  precision),  and  then 
wafted  a  whiff  among  them  that  sent  them 
gasping  and  stranghng  to  the  rear  again.  I 
kept  my  gun  well  charged  and  ready,  and  twice 
within  the  hour  I  decoyed  the  boys  right  up  to 
my  horse's  tail,  and  then  with  one  malarious 
blast  emptied  the  saddles,  almost.  I  never 
heard  an  Arab  abused  so  in  my  hfe.  He  really 
owed  his  preservation  to  me,  because  for  one 
entire  hour  I  stood  between  him  and  certain 
death.  The  boys  would  have  killed  him  if  they 
could  have  got  by  me. 

By  and  by,  when  the  company  were  far  in 
the  rear,  I  put  away  my  pipe — I  was  getting 
fearfully  dry  and  crisp  about  the  gills  and 
rather  blown  with  good  diligent  work — and 
spurred  my  animated  trance  up  alongside  the 
Arab  and  stopped  him  and  asked  for  water. 
He  unslung  his  little  gourd-shaped  earthen- 
ware jug,  and  I  put  it  under  my  moustache 
and  took  a  long,  glorious,  satisfying  draught. 
I  was  going  to  scour  the  mouth  of  the  jug  a 
little,  but  I  saw  that  I  had  brought  the  whole 


52       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

train  together  once  more  by  my  delay,  and  that 
they  were  all  anxious  to  drink  too — and  would 
have  been  long  ago  if  the  Arab  had  not  pre- 
tended that  he  was  out  of  water.  So  I  has- 
tened to  pass  the  vessel  to  Davis.  He  took  a 
mouthful,  and  never  said  a  word,  but  climbed 
off  his  horse  and  lay  down  calmly  in  the  road. 
I  felt  sorry  for  Davis.  It  was  too  late  now, 
though,  and  Dan  was  drinking.  Dan  got  down 
too,  and  hunted  for  a  soft  place.  I  thought  I 
heard  Dan  say,  "That  Arab's  friends  ought  to 
keep  him  in  alcohol  or  else  take  him  out  and 
bury  him  somewhere."  All  the  boys  took  a 
drink  and  climbed  down.  It  is  not  well  to  go 
into  further  particulars.  Let  us  draw  the  cur- 
tain upon  this  act. 

•  •  •  • 

Well,  now,  to  think  that  after  three  chang- 
ing years  I  should  hear  from  that  curious  old 
rehc  again,  and  see  Dan  advertising  it  for  sale 
for  the  benefit  of  a  benevolent  object.  Dan  is 
not  treating  that  present  right.  I  gave  that 
pipe  to  him  for  a  keepsake.     However,  he 


CURIOUS    RELIC    FOR   SALE  53 

probably  finds  that  it  keeps  away  custom  and 
interferes  with  business.  It  is  the  most  con- 
vincing inanimate  object  in  all  this  part  of  the 
world,  perhaps.  Dan  and  I  were  room-mates 
in  all  that  long  "Quaker  City"  voyage,  and 
whenever  I  desired  to  have  a  little  season  of 
privacy  I  used  to  fire  up  on  that  pipe  and  per- 
suade Dan  to  go  out ;  and  he  seldom  waited  to 
change  his  clothes,  either.  In  about  a  quarter, 
or  from  that  to  three-quarters  of  a  minute,  he 
would  be  propping  up  the  smoke-stack  on  the 
upper  deck  and  cursing.  I  wonder  how  the 
faithful  old  relic  is  going  to  sell? 


A  REMINISCENCE  OF  THE  BACK 
SETTLEMENTS 

NOW  that  corpse  [said  the  under- 
taker, patting  the  folded  hands 
of  the  deceased  approvingly]  was 
a  brick — every  way  you  took  him 
he  was  a  brick.  He  was  so  real  accommodat- 
ing, and  so  modest-like  and  simple  in  his  last 
moments.  Friends  wanted  metallic  burial 
case — nothing  else  would  do.  I  couldn't  get 
it.  There  warn't  going  to  be  time — anybody 
could  see  that.  Corpse  said  never  mind,  shake 
him  up  some  kind  of  a  box  he  could  stretch  out 
in  comfortable,  he  warn't  particular  'bout  the 
general  style  of  it.  Said  he  went  more  on  room 
than  style,  any  way,  in  the  last  final  container. 
Friends  wanted  a  silver  door-plate  on  the 
coffin,  signifying  who  he  was  ar.vl  >'^her'  he  was 
from.  Now  you  know  a  fellow  couldn't  roust 
out  such  a  gaily  thing  as  that  in  a  little  country 

54 


THE    BACK    SETTLEMENTS  55 

town  like  this.  What  did  corpse  say?  Corpse 
said,  whitewash  his  old  canoe  and  dob  his  ad- 
dress and  general  destination  onto  it  with  a 
blacking  brush  and  a  stencil  plate,  long  with  a 
verse  from  some  likely  hymn  or  other,  and 
p'int  him  for  the  tomb,  and  mark  him  C.  O.  D., 
and  just  let  him  skip  along.  He  warn't  dis- 
tressed any  more  than  you  be — on  the  contrary 
just  as  carm  and  collected  as  a  hearse-horse; 
said  he  judged  that  wher'  he  was  going  to,  a 
body  would  find  it  considerable  better  to  at- 
tract attention  by  a  picturesque  moral  char- 
acter than  a  natty  burial  case  with  a  swell  door- 
plate  on  it.  Splendid  man,  he  was.  I'd 
druther  do  for  a  corpse  hke  that  'n  any  I've 
tackled  in  seven  year.  There's  some  satisfac- 
tion in  buryin'  a  man  Hke  that.  You  feel  that 
what  you're  doing  is  appreciated.  Lord  bless 
you,  so's  he  got  planted  before  he  sp'iled,  he 
was  perfectly  satisfied ;  said  his  relations  meant 
well,  perfectly  well,  but  all  them  preparations 
was  bound  to  delay  the  thing  more  or  less,  and 
he  didn't  wish  to  be  kept  layin'  round.    You 


56       CUEIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

never  see  such  a  clear  head  as  what  he  had — 
and  so  carm  and  so  cool.  Just  a  hunk  of  brains 
— that  is  what  he  was.  Perfectly  awful.  It 
was  a  ripping  distance  from  one  end  of  that 
man's  head  to  t'other.  Often  and  over  again 
he's  had  brain  fever  a-raging  in  one  place,  and 
the  rest  of  the  pile  didn't  know  anything  about 
it — didn't  affect  it  any  more  than  an  Injun  in- 
surrection in  Arizona  affects  the  Atlantic 
States.  Well,  the  relations  they  wanted  a  big 
funeral,  but  corpse  said  he  was  down  on  flum- 
mery— didn't  want  any  procession — fill  the 
hearse  full  of  mourners,  and  get  out  a  stern 
line  and  tow  him  behind.  He  was  the  most 
down  on  style  of  any  remains  I  ever  struck. 
A  beautiful,  simple-minded  creature — it  was 
what  he  was,  you  can  depend  on  that.  He  was 
just  set  on  having  things  the  way  he  wanted 
them,  and  he  took  a  solid  comfort  in  laying  his 
little  plans.  He  had  me  measure  him  and  take 
a  whole  raft  of  directions ;  then  he  had  a  min- 
ister stand  up  behind  a  long  box  with  a  table- 
cloth over  it  and  read  his  funeral  sermon,  say- 


THE    BACK    SETTLEMENTS  57 

ing  'Angcore,  angcore !'  at  the  good  places,  and 
making  him  scratch  out  every  bit  of  brag  about 
him,  and  all  the  hifalutin;  and  then  he  made 
them  trot  out  the  choir  so's  he  could  help  them 
pick  out  the  tunes  for  the  occasion,  and  he  got 
them  to  sing  'Pop  Goes  the  Weasel,'  because 
he'd  always  hked  that  tune  when  he  was  down- 
hearted, and  solemn  music  made  him  sad;  and 
when  they  sung  that  with  tears  in  their  eyes 
(because  they  all  loved  him),  and  his  relations 
grieving  around,  he  just  laid  there  as  happy  as 
a  bug,  and  trying  to  beat  time  and  showing 
all  over  how  much  he  enjoyed  it;  and  presently 
he  got  worked  up  and  excited;  and  tried  to  join 
in,  for  mind  you  he  was  pretty  proud  of  his 
abihties  in  the  singing  line ;  but  the  first  time  he 
opened  his  mouth  and  was  just  going  to  spread 
himself,  his  breath  took  a  walk.  I  never  see  a 
man  snuffed  out  so  sudden.  Ah,  it  was  a  great 
loss — ^it  was  a  powerful  loss  to  this  poor  little 
one-horse  town.  Well,  well,  well,  I  hain't  got 
time  to  be  palavering  along  here — got  to  nail 
on  the  lid  and  mosey  along  with  him;  and  if 


58       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

you'll  just  give  me  a  lift  we'll  skeet  him  into 
the  hearse  and  meander  along.  Relations 
bound  to  have  it  so — don't  pay  no  attention  to 
dying  injunctions,  minute  a  corpse's  gone;  but 
if  I  had  my  way,  if  I  didn't  respect  his  last 
wishes  and  tow  him  behind  the  hearse,  Z'll  be 
cuss'd.  I  consider  that  whatever  a  corpse 
wants  done  for  his  comfort  is  a  little  enough 
matter,  and  a  man  hain't  got  no  right  to  deceive 
him  or  take  advantage  of  him — and  whatever 
a  corpse  trusts  me  to  do  I'm  a-going  to  do,  you 
know,  even  if  it's  to  stuff  him  and  paint  him 
yaller  and  keep  him  for  a  keepsake — you  hear 
me!" 

He  cracked  his  whip  and  went  lumbering 
away  with  his  ancient  ruin  of  a  hearse,  and  I 
continued  my  walk  with  a  valuable  lesson 
learned — that  a  healthy  and  wholesome  cheer- 
fulness is  not  necessarily  impossible  to  any  oc- 
cupation. The  lesson  is  Hkely  to  be  lasting, 
for  it  will  take  many  months  to  obliterate  the 
memory  of  the  remarks  and  circumstances  that 
impressed  it. 


A  ROYAL  COMPLIMENT 

The  latest  report  about  the  Spanish  crown  is,  that 
it  will  now  be  offered  to  Prince  Alfonso,  the  second 
son  of  the  King  of  Portugal,  who  is  but  five  years  of 
age.  The  Spaniards  have  hunted  through  all  the 
nations  of  Europe  for  a  King.  They  tried  to  get  a 
Portuguese  in  the  person  of  Dom-Luis,  who  is  an  old 
ex-monarch ;  they  tried  to  get  an  Italian,  in  the 
person  of  Victor  Emanuel's  young  son,  the  Duke  of 
Genoa ;  they  tried  to  get  a  Spaniard,  in  the  person  of 
Espartero,  who  is  an  octogenarian.  Some  of  them 
desired  a  French  Bourbon,  Montpensier ;  some  of 
them  a  Spanish  Bourbon,  the  Prince  of  Asturias ; 
some  of  them  an  English  prince,  one  of  the  sons  of 
Queen  Victoria.  They  have  just  tried  to  get  the 
German  Prince  Leopold;  but  they  have  thought  it 
better  to  give  him  up  than  take  a  war  along  with  him. 
It  is  a  long  time  since  we  first  suggested  to  them  to 
try  an  American  ruler.  We  can  offer  them  a  large 
number  of  able  and  experienced  sovereigns  to  pick 
from — men  skilled  in  statesmanship,  versed  in  the 
science  of  government,  and  adepts  in  all  the  arts  of 
administration —  men  who  could  wear  the  crown  with 
dignity  and  rule  the  kingdom  at  a  reasonable  expense. 

59 


60       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

There  is  not  the  least  danger  of  Napoleon  threaten- 
ing them  if  they  take  an  American  sovereign ;  in  fact, 
we  have  no  doubt  he  would  be  pleased  to  support 
such  a  candidature.  We  are  unwilling  to  mention 
names — though  we  have  a  man  in  our  eye  whom  we 
wish  they  had  in  theirs. — New  York  Tribune. 

IT  would  be  but  an  ostentation  of  modesty 
to  permit  such  a  pointed  reference  to  my- 
self to  pass  unnoticed.  This  is  the  second 
time  that  The  Tribune  (no  doubt  sin- 
cerely looking  to  the  best  interests  of  Spain 
and  the  world  at  large)  has  done  me  the  great 
and  unusual  honour  to  propose  me  as  a  fit  per- 
son to  fill  the  Spanish  throne.  Why  The 
Tribune  should  single  me  out  in  this  way  from 
the  midst  of  a  dozen  Americans  of  higher  po- 
litical prominence,  is  a  problem  which  I  can- 
not solve.  Beyond  a  somewhat  intimate 
knowledge  of  Spanish  history  and  a  profound 
veneration  for  its  great  names  and  illustrious 
deeds,  I  feel  that  I  possess  no  merit  that  should 
peculiarly  recommend  me  to  this  royal  distinc- 
tion.   I  cannot  deny  that  Spanish  history  has 


A   ROYAL    COMPLIMENT  61 

always  been  mother's  milk  to  me.  I  am  proud 
of  every  Spanish  achievement,  from  Hernando 
Cortes's  victory  at  Thermopylae  down  to  Vasco 
Nunez  de  Balboa's  discovery  of  the  Atlantic 
ocean;  and  of  every  splendid  Spanish  name, 
from  Don  Quixote  and  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton down  to  Don  Caesar  de  Bazan.  However, 
these  little  graces  of  erudition  are  of  small  con- 
sequence, being  more  showy  than  serviceable. 

In  case  the  Spanish  sceptre  is  pressed  upon 
me — and  the  indications  unquestionably  are 
that  it  will  be — I  shall  feel  it  necessary  to  have 
certain  things  set  down  and  distinctly  under- 
stood beforehand.  For  instance:  My  salary 
must  be  paid  quarterly  in  advance.  In  these 
unsettled  times  it  will  not  do  to  trust.  If  Isa- 
bella had  adopted  this  plan,  she  would  be  roost- 
ing on  her  ancestral  throne  to-day,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  her  subjects  never  could 
have  raised  three  months  of  a  royal  salary  in 
advance,  and  of  course  they  could  not  have  dis- 
charged her  until  they  had  squared  up  with  her. 
My  salary  must  be  paid  in  gold ;  when  green- 


62       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

backs  are  fresh  in  a  country,  they  are  too  fluc- 
tuating. My  salary  has  got  to  be  put  at  the 
ruling  market  rate;  I  am  not  going  to  cut 
under  on  the  trade,  and  they  are  not  going  to 
trail  me  a  long  way  from  home  and  then  prac- 
tise on  my  ignorance  and  play  me  for  a  royal 
North  Adams  Chinaman,  by  any  means.  As  I 
understand  it,  imported  kings  generally  get 
five  millions  a  year  and  house-rent  free. 
Young  George  of  Greece  gets  that.  As  the 
revenues  only  yield  two  millions,  he  has  to  take 
the  national  note  for  considerable;  but  even 
with  things  in  that  sort  of  shape  he  is  better 
fixed  than  he  was  in  Denmark,  where  he  had  to 
eternally  stand  up  because  he  had  no  throne  to 
sit  on,  and  had  to  give  bail  for  his  board,  be- 
cause a  royal  apprentice  gets  no  salary  there 
while  he  is  learning  his  trade.  England  is  the 
place  for  that.  Fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year 
Great  Britain  pays  on  each  royal  child  that  is 
born,  and  this  is  increased  from  year  to  year 
as  the  child  becomes  more  and  more  indispen- 
sable to  his  country.    Look  at  Prince  Arthur. 


A   ROYAL    COMPLIMENT  63 

At  first  he  only  got  the  usual  bu'th-bounty ;  but 
now  that  he  has  got  so  that  he  can  dance,  there 
is  simply  no  telling  what  wages  he  gets. 

I  should  have  to  stipulate  that  the  Spanish 
people  wash  more  and  endeavour  to  get  along 
with  less  quarantine.  Do  you  know,  Spain 
keeps  her  ports  fast  locked  against  foreign 
traffic  three-fourths  of  each  year,  because  one 
day  she  is  scared  about  the  cholera,  and  the 
next  about  the  plague,  and  next  the  measles, 
next  the  hooping  cough,  the  hives,  and  the 
rash  ?  but  she  does  not  mind  leonine  leprosy  and 
elephantiasis  any  more  than  a  great  and  en- 
lightened civiHsation  minds  freckles.  Soap 
would  soon  remove  her  anxious  distress  about 
foreign  distempers.  The  reason  arable  land  is 
so  scarce  in  Spain  is  because  the  people 
squander  so  much  of  it  on  their  persons,  and 
then  when  they  die  it  is  improvidently  buried 
with  them. 

I  should  feel  obliged  to  stipulate  that 
Marshal  Serrano  be  reduced  to  the  rank  of  con- 
stable, or  even  roundsman.    He  is  no  longer  fit 


64       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

to  be  City  Marshal.  A  man  who  refused  to  be 
king  because  he  was  too  old  and  feeble,  is  ill 
qualified  to  help  sick  people  to  the  station- 
house  when  they  are  armed  and  their  form  of 
delirium  tremens  is  of  the  exuberant  and 
demonstrative  kind. 

I  should  also  require  that  a  force  be  sent  to 
chase  the  late  Queen  Isabella  out  of  France. 
Her  presence  there  can  work  no  advantage  to 
Spain,  and  she  ought  to  be  made  to  move  at 
once;  though,  poor  thing,  she  has  been  chaste 
enough  heretofore — for  a  Spanish  woman. 

I  should  also  require  that — 

I  am  at  this  moment  authoritatively  in- 
formed that  "The  Tribune"  did  not  mean  me, 
after  all.    Very  well,  I  do  not  care  two  cents. 


THE  APPROACHING  EPIDEMIC 

ONE  calamity  to  which  the  death  of 
Mr.  Dickens  dooms  this  country 
has  not  awakened  the  concern  to 
which  its  gravity  entitles  it.  We 
refer  to  the  fact  that  the  nation  is  to  be  lec- 
tured to  death  and  read  to  death  all  next 
winter,  by  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,  with  poor 
lamented  Dickens  for  a  pretext.  All  the  vaga- 
bonds who  can  spell  will  afflict  the  people  with 
"readings"  from  Pickwick  and  Copperfield, 
and  all  the  insignificants  who  have  been  en- 
nobled by  the  notice  of  the  great  novehst  or 
transfigured  by  his  smile  will  make  a  market- 
able commodity  of  it  now,  and  turn  the  sacred 
reminiscence  to  the  practical  use  of  procuring 
bread  and  butter.  The  lecture  rostrums  will 
fairly  swarm  with  these  fortunates.  Already 
the  signs  of  it  are  perceptible.  Behold  how  the 
unclean  creatures  are  wending  toward  the  dead 
Hon  and  gathering  to  the  feast: 

65 


66       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

"Reminiscences  of  Dickens."  A  lecture. 
By  John  Smith,  who  heard  him  read  eight 
times. 

"Remembrances  of  Charles  Dickens."  A 
lecture.  By  John  Jones,  who  saw  him  once  in 
,a  street  car  and  twice  in  a  barber  shop. 

"Recollections  of  Mr.  Dickens."  A  lecture. 
By  John  Brown,  who  gained  a  wide  fame  by 
writing  dehriously  appreciative  critiques  and 
rhapsodies  upon  the  great  author's  public  read- 
ings; and  who  shook  hands  with  the  great 
author  upon  various  occasions,  and  held  con- 
verse with  him  several  times. 

"Readings  from  Dickens."  By  John 
White,  who  has  the  great  delineator's  style  and 
manner  perfectly,  having  attended  all  his  read- 
ings in  this  country  and  made  these  things  a 
study,  always  practising  each  reading  before 
retiring,  and  while  it  was  hot  from  the  great  de- 
lineator's lips.  Upon  this  occasion  Mr.  W. 
will  exhibit  the  remains  of  a  cigar  which  he  saw 
Mr.  Dickens  smoke.  This  ReHc  is  kept  in  a 
sohd  silver  box  made  purposely  for  it. 


THE   APPROACHING   EPIDEMIC  67 

"Sights  and  Sounds  of  the  Great  Xovelist." 
A  popular  lecture.  By  John  Gray,  who 
waited  on  his  table  all  the  time  he  was  at  the 
Grand  Hotel,  INew  York,  and  still  has  in  his 
possession  and  will  exhibit  to  the  audience  a 
fragment  of  the  Last  Piece  of  Bread  which  the 
lamented  author  tasted  in  this  country. 

"Heart  Treasures  of  Precious  Moments 
with  Literature's  Departed  Monarch."  A  lec- 
ture. By  Miss  Serena  Amelia  Tryphenia  Mc- 
Spadden,  who  still  wears,  and  will  always  wear, 
a  glove  upon  the  hand  made  sacred  by  the  clasp 
of  Dickens.    Only  Death  shall  remove  it. 

"Readings  from  Dickens."  By  Mrs.  J. 
O'Hooligan  Murphy,  who  washed  for  him. 

"Famihar  Talks  with  the  Great  Author." 
A  narrative  lecture.  By  John  Thomas,  for 
two  weeks  his  valet  in  America. 

And  so  forth,  and  so  on.  This  isn't  half  the 
list.  The  man  who  has  a  "Toothpick  once  used 
by  Charles  Dickens"  will  have  to  have  a  hear- 
ing; and  the  man  who  "once  rode  in  an  omnibus 
with  Charles  Dickens ;"  and  the  lady  to  whom 


68       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

Charles  Dickens  "granted  the  hospitalities  of 
his  umbrella  during  a  storm;"  and  the  person 
who  "possesses  a  hole  which  once  belonged  in 
a  handkerchief  owned  by  Charles  Dickens." 
Be  patient  and  long-suifering,  good  people, 
for  even  this  does  not  fill  up  the  measure  of 
what  you  must  endure  next  winter.  There  is 
no  creature  in  all  this  land  who  has  had  any 
personal  relations  with  the  late  Mr.  Dickens, 
however  slight  or  trivial,  but  will  shoulder  his 
way  to  the  rostrum  and  inflict  his  testimony 
upon  his  helpless  countrymen.  To  some  peo- 
ple it  is  fatal  to  be  noticed  by  greatness. 


THE  TONE-IMPAKTING 
COMMITTEE 

WHEN  I  get  old  and  ponder- 
ously respectable,  only  one 
thing  will  be  able  to  make  me 
truly  happy,  and  that  will  be 
to  be  put  on  the  Venerable  Tone-Imparting 
committee  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and  have 
nothing  to  do  but  sit  on  the  platform,  solemn 
and  imposing,  along  with  Peter  Cooper,  Hor- 
ace Greeley,  etc.,  etc.,  and  shed  momentary 
fame  at  second  hand  on  obscure  lecturers,  draw 
pubhc  attention  to  lectures  which  would  other- 
wise clack  eloquently  to  sounding  emptiness, 
and  subdue  audiences  into  respectful  hearing 
of  all  sorts  of  unpopular  and  outlandish  dog- 
mas and  isms.  That  is  what  I  desire  for  the 
cheer  and  gratification  of  my  gray  hairs.  Let 
me  but  sit  up  there  with  those  fine  rehcs  of  the 
Old  Red  Sandstone  Period  and  give  Tone  to 

69 


70       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

an  intellectual  entertainment  twice  a  week,  and 
be  so  reported,  and  my  happiness  will  be  com- 
plete. Those  men  have  been  my  envy  for  a 
long,  long  time.  And  no  memories  of  my  hfe 
are  so  pleasant  as  my  reminiscence  of  their 
long  and  honorable  career  in  the  Tone-im- 
parting service.  I  can  recollect  that  fii'st  time 
I  ever  saw  them  on  the  platforms  just  as  well 
as  I  can  remember  the  events  of  yesterday. 
Horace  Greeley  sat  on  the  right,  Peter  Cooper 
on  the  left,  and  Thomas  Jefferson,  Red  Jacket, 
Benjamin  Franklin,  and  John  Hancock  sat 
between  them.  This  was  on  the  22d  of  De- 
cember, 1799,  on  the  occasion  of  the  state 
funeral  of  George  Washington  in  New  York. 
It  was  a  great  day,  that — a  great  day,  and  a 
very,  very  sad  one.  I  remember  that  Broad- 
way was  one  mass  of  black  crape  from  Castle 
Garden  nearly  up  to  where  the  City  Hall  now 
stands.  The  next  time  I  saw  these  gentlemen 
officiate  was  at  a  ball  given  for  the  purpose  of 
procuring  money  and  medicines  for  the  sick 
and  wounded  soldiers  and  sailors.     Horace 


THE    TONE-IMPAKTING    COMMITTEE    71 

Greeley  occupied  one  side  of  the  platform  on 
which  the  musicians  were  exalted,  and  Peter 
Cooper  the  other.  There  were  other  Tone- 
imparters  attendant  upon  the  two  chiefs,  but 
I  have  forgotten  their  names  now.  Horace 
Greeley,  gray-haired  and  beaming,  was  in 
sailor  costume — white  duck  pants,  blue  shirt, 
open  at  the  breast,  large  neckerchief,  loose  as 
an  ox-bow,  and  tied  with  a  jaunty  sailor  knot, 
broad  turnover  collar  with  star  in  the  corner, 
shiny  black  little  tarpaulin  hat  roosting  dain- 
tily far  back  on  head,  and  flying  two  gallant 
long  ribbons.  Slippers  on  ample  feet,  round 
spectacles  on  benignant  nose,  and  pitchfork  in 
hand,  completed  Mr.  Greeley,  and  made  him, 
in  my  boyish  admiration,  every  inch  a  sailor, 
and  worthy  to  be  the  honored  great-grand- 
father of  the  Neptune  he  was  so  ingeniously 
representing.  I  shall  never  forget  him.  Mr. 
Cooper  was  dressed  as  a  general  of  mihtia,  and 
was  dismally  and  oppressively  warlike.  I 
neglected  to  remark,  in  the  proper  place,  that 
the  soldiers  and  sailors  in  whose  aid  the  ball  was 


72       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

given  had  just  been  sent  in  from  Boston — ^this 
was  during  the  war  of  1812.  At  the  grand  na- 
tional reception  of  Lafayette,  in  1824,  Horace 
Greeley  sat  on  the  right  and  Peter  Cooper  on 
the  left.  The  other  Tone-imparters  of  that 
day  are  sleeping  the  sleep  of  the  just  now.  I 
was  in  the  audience  when  Horace  Greeley, 
Peter  Cooper,  and  other  chief  citizens  im- 
parted tone  to  the  great  meetings  in  favor  of 
French  hberty,  in  1848.  Then  I  never  saw 
them  any  more  until  here  lately ;  but  now  that 
I  am  living  tolerably  near  the  city,  I  run  down 
every  time  I  see  it  announced  that  "Horace 
Greeley,  Peter  Cooper,  and  several  other  dis- 
tinguished citizens  will  occupy  seats  on  the 
platform;"  and  next  morning,  when  I  read  in 
the  first  paragraph  of  the  phonographic  report 
that  "Horace  Greeley,  Peter  Cooper,  and  sev- 
eral other  distinguished  citizens  occupied  seats 
on  the  platform,"  I  say  to  myself,  "Thank 
God,  I  was  present."  Thus  I  have  been  en- 
abled to  see  these  substantial  old  friends  of 
mine  sit  on  the  platform  and  give  tone  to  lee- 


THE    TONE-IMPARTING    COMMITTEE    73 

tures  on  anatomy,  and  lectures  on  agriculture, 
and  lectures  on  stirpiculture,  and  lectures  on 
astronomy,  on  chemistry,  on  miscegenation,  on 
*'Is  Man  Descended  from  the  Kangaroo?"  on 
veterinary  matters,  on  all  kinds  of  reHgion,  and 
several  kinds  of  pohtics;  and  have  seen  them 
give  tone  and  grandeur  to  the  Four-legged 
Girl,  the  Siamese  Twins,  the  Great  Egyptian 
Sword  Swallower,  and  the  Old  Original 
Jacobs.  Whenever  somebody  is  to  lecture  on 
a  subject  not  of  general  interest,  I  know  that 
my  venerated  Remains  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone Period  will  be  on  the  platform ;  whenever 
a  lecturer  is  to  appear  Whom  nobody  has  heard 
of  before,  nor  will  be  likely  to  seek  to  see,  I 
know  that  the  real  benevolence  of  my  old 
friends  will  be  taken  advantage  of,  and  that 
they  will  be  on  the  platform  (and  in  the  bills) 
as  an  advertisement;  and  whenever  any  new 
and  obnoxious  deviltry  in  philosophy,  morals, 
or  pohtics  is  to  be  sprung  upon  the  people,  I 
know  perfectly  well  that  these  intrepid  old 
heroes  will  be  on  the  platform  too,  in  the  inter- 


74        CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF    GONDOUR 

est  of  full  and  free  discussion,  and  to  crush 
down  all  narrower  and  less  generous  souls  with 
the  solid  dead  weight  of  their  awful  respect- 
abiUty.  And  let  us  all  remember  that  while 
these  inveterate  and  imperishable  presiders  (if 
you  please)  appear  on  the  platform  every 
night  in  the  year  as  regularly  as  the  volun- 
teered piano  from  Steinway's  or  Chickering's, 
and  have  bolstered  up  and  given  tone  to  a  deal 
of  questionable  merit  and  obscure  emptiness  in 
their  time,  they  have  also  diversified  this  incon- 
sequential service  by  occasional  powerful  up- 
hfting  and  upholding  of  great  progressive 
ideas  which  smaller  men  feared  to  meddle  with 
mi  countenance. 


GOLDSMITH'S  FRIEND  ABROAD 
AGAIN 

Note. — No  experience  is  set  down  in  the  following 
letters  which  had  to  be  invented.  Fancy  is  not  needed 
to  give  variety  to  the  history  of  a  Chinaman's  so- 
journ in  America.     Plain  fact  is  amply  sufficient. 

LETTER  I 

Shanghai^  18 — . 

DEAR  CHING-FOO:  It  is  all 
settled,  and  I  am  to  leave  my  op- 
pressed and  overburdened  native 
land  and  cross  the  sea  to  that  noble 
realm  where  all  are  free  and  all  equal,  and  none 
reviled  or  abused — America!  America,  whose 
precious  privilege  it  is  to  caU  herself  the  Land 
of  the  Free  and  the  Home  of  the  Brave.  We 
and  all  that  are  about  us  here  look  over  the 
waves  longingly,  contrasting  the  privations  of 
this  our  birthplace  with  the  opulent  comfort  of 
that  happy  refuge.  We  know  how  America 
has  welcomed  the  Germans  and  the  Frenchmen 

75 


76       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

and  the  stricken  and  sorrowing  Irish,  and  we 
know  how  she  has  given  them  bread  and  work 
and  hberty,  and  how  grateful  they  are.  And 
we  know  that  America  stands  ready  to  welcome 
all  other  oppressed  peoples  and  oflPer  her  abun- 
dance to  all  that  come,  without  asking  what 
their  nationality  is,  or  their  creed  or  color. 
And,  without  being  told  it,  we  know  that  the 
foreign  sufferers  she  has  rescued  from  oppres- 
sion and  starvation  are  the  most  eager  of  her 
children  to  welcome  us,  because,  having  suf- 
fered themselves,  they  know  what  suffering  is, 
and  having  been  generously  succored,  they 
long  to  be  generous  to  other  unfortunates  and 
thus  show  that  magnanimity  is  not  wasted 

upon  them. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


letter  ii 

At  Sea,  18—. 
Dear  Ching-Foo:  We  are  far  away  at  sea 
now,  on  our  way  to  the  beautiful  Land  of  the 
Free  and  Home  of  the  Brave.    We  shall  soon 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD  77 

be  where  all  men  are  alike,  and  where  sorrow 
is  not  known. 

The  good  American  who  hired  me  to  go  to 
his  country  is  to  pay  me  $12  a  month,  which  is 
immense  wages,  you  know — twenty  times  as 
much  as  one  gets  in  China.  My  passage  in 
the  ship  is  a  very  large  sum — indeed,  it  is  a 
fortune — and  this  I  must  pay  myself  event- 
ually, but  I  am  allowed  ample  time  to  make  it 
good  to  my  employer  in,  he  advancing  it  now. 
For  a  mere  form,  I  have  turned  over  my  wife, 
my  boy,  and  my  two  daughters  to  my  employ- 
er's partner  for  security  for  the  payment  of  the 
ship  fare.  But  my  employer  says  they  are  in 
no  danger  of  being  sold,  for  he  knows  I  will 
be  faithful  to  him,  and  that  is  the  main  security. 

I  thought  I  would  have  twelve  dollars  to 
begin  hfe  with  in  America,  but  the  American 
Consul  took  two  of  them  for  making  a  certifi- 
cate that  I  was  shipped  on  the  steamer.  He 
has  no  right  to  do  more  than  charge  the  ship 
two  dollars  for  one  certificate  for  the  ship^ 
with  the  number  of  her  Chinese  passengers  set 


78       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

down  in  it ;  but  he  chooses  to  force  a  certificate 
upon  each  and  every  Chinaman  and  put  the 
two  dollars  in  his  pocket.  As  1,300  of  my 
countrymen  are  in  this  vessel,  the  Consul  re- 
ceived $2,600  for  certificates.  My  employer 
tells  me  that  the  Government  at  Washington 
know  of  this  fraud,  and  are  so  bitterly  opposed 
to  the  existence  of  such  a  wrong  that  they  tried 

hard  to  have  the  extor the  fee,  I  mean, 

legalised  by  the  last  Congress  ;*  but  as  the  bill 
did  not  pass,  the  Consul  will  have  to  take  the 
fee  dishonestly  until  next  Congress  makes  it 
legitimate.  It  is  a  great  and  good  and  noble 
country,  and  hates  all  forms  of  vice  and  chi- 
canery. 

We  are  in  that  part  of  the  vessel  always  re- 
served for  my  countrymen.  It  is  called  the 
steerage.  It  is  kept  for  us,  my  employer  says, 
because  it  is  not  subject  to  changes  of  temper- 
ature and  dangerous  drafts  of  air.  It  is  only 
another  instance  of  the  loving  unselfishness  of 

*  Pacific  and  Mediterranean  steamship  bUls. — 
^Ed.  Mem.) 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD  79 

the  Americans  for  all  unfortunate  foreigners. 
The  steerage  is  a  Httle  crowded,  and  rather 
warm  and  close,  but  no  doubt  it  is  best  for  us 
that  it  should  be  so. 

Yesterday  our  people  got  to  quarrelling 
among  themselves,  and  the  captain  turned  a 
volume  of  hot  steam  upon  a  mass  of  them  and 
scalded  eighty  or  ninety  of  them  more  or  less 
severely.  Flakes  and  ribbons  of  skin  came  off 
some  of  them.  There  was  wild  shrieking  and 
struggling  while  the  vapour  enveloped  the 
great  throng,  and  so  some  who  were  not  scalded 
got  trampled  upon  and  hurt.  We  do  not  com- 
plain, for  my  employer  says  this  is  the  usual 
way  of  quieting  disturbances  on  board  the  ship, 
and  that  it  is  done  in  the  cabins  among  the 
Americans  every  day  or  two. 

Congratulate  me,  Ching-Fool  In  ten  days 
more  I  shall  step  upon  the  shore  of  America, 
and  be  received  by  her  great-hearted  people; 
and  I  shall  straighten  myself  up  and  feel  that  I 
am  a  free  man  among  freemen. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


80     curious  republic  of  gondour 

letter  iii 

San  Francisco^  18 — . 
Dear  Ching-Foo:  I  stepped  ashore  jubi- 
lant! I  wanted  to  dance,  shout,  sing,  worship 
the  generous  Land  of  the  Free  and  Home  of 
the  Brave.  But  as  I  walked  from  the  gang- 
plank a  man  in  a  gray  uniform*  kicked  me  vio- 
lently behind  and  told  me  to  look  out — so  my 
employer  translated  it.  As  I  turned,  another 
officer  of  the  same  kind  struck  me  with  a  short 
club  and  also  instructed  me  to  look  out.  I  was 
about  to  take  hold  of  my  end  of  the  pole  which 
had  mine  and  Hong-Wo's  basket  and  things 
suspended  from  it,  when  a  third  officer  hit  me 
with  his  club  to  signify  that  I  was  to  drop  it, 
and  then  kicked  me  to  signify  that  he  was  satis- 
fied with  my  promptness.  Another  person 
came  now,  and  searched  all  through  our  basket 
and  bundles,  emptying  everything  out  on  the 
dirty  wharf.  Then  this  person  and  another 
searched  us  all  over.    They  found  a  little  pack- 

*  Policeman. 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD  81 

age  of  opium  sewed  into  the  artificial  part  of 
Hong-wo's  queue,  and  they  took  that,  and  also 
they  made  him  prisoner  and  handed  him  over  to 
an  officer,  who  marched  him  away.  They  took 
his  luggage,  too,  because  of  his  crime,  and  as 
our  luggage  was  so  mixed  together  that  they 
could  not  tell  mine  from  his,  they  took  it  all. 
When  I  offered  to  help  divide  it,  they  kicked 
me  and  desired  me  to  look  out. 

Having  now  no  baggage  and  no  companion, 
I  told  my  employer  that  if  he  was  willing,  I 
would  walk  about  a  little  and  see  the  city  and 
the  people  until  he  needed  me.  I  did  not  like 
to  seem  disappointed  with  my  reception  in  the 
good  land  of  refuge  for  the  oppressed,  and  so 
I  looked  and  spoke  as  cheerily  as  I  could.  But 
he  said,  wait  a  minute — I  must  be  vaccinated 
to  prevent  my  taking  the  small-pox.  I  smiled 
and  said  I  had  already  had  the  small-pox,  as  he 
could  see  by  the  marks,  and  so  I  need  not  wait 
to  be  "vaccinated,"  as  he  called  it.  But  he 
said  it  was  the  law,  and  I  must  be  vaccinated 
anyhow.    The  doctor  would  never  let  me  pass. 


82       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

for  the  law  obliged  him  to  vaccinate  all  China- 
men and  charge  them  ten  dollars  apiece  for  it, 
and  I  might  be  sure  that  no  doctor  who  would 
be  the  servant  of  that  law  would  let  a  fee  slip 
through  his  fingers  to  accommodate  any  absurd 
fool  who  had  seen  fit  to  have  the  disease  in  some 
other  country.  And  presently  the  doctor  came 
and  did  his  work  and  took  my  last  penny — my 
ten  dollars  which  were  the  hard  savings  of 
nearly  a  year  and  a  half  of  labour  and  priva- 
tion. Ah,  if  the  law-makers  had  only  known 
there  were  plenty  of  doctors  in  the  citj^  glad  of 
a  chance  to  vaccinate  people  for  a  dollar  or  two, 
they  would  never  have  put  the  price  up  so  high 
against  a  poor  friendless  Irish,  or  Italian,  or 
Chinese  pauper  fleeing  to  the  good  land  to 
escape  hunger  and  hard  times. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


letter  iv 

San  Francisco^  18 — . 
Dear  Ching-Foo  :  I  have  been  here  about  a 
month  now,  and  am  learning  a  httle  of  the  Ian- 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD  83 

guage  every  day.  My  employer  was  disap- 
pointed in  the  matter  of  hiring  us  out  to  service 
on  the  plantations  in  the  far  eastern  portion  of 
this  continent.  His  enterprise  was  a  failure, 
and  so  he  set  us  all  free,  merely  taking  meas- 
ures to  secure  to  himself  the  repayment  of  the 
passage  money  which  he  paid  for  us.  We  are 
to  make  this  good  to  him  out  of  the  first  moneys 
we  earn  here.  He  says  it  is  sixty  dollars 
apiece. 

We  were  thus  set  free  about  two  weeks  after 
we  reached  here.  We  had  been  massed  to- 
gether in  some  small  houses  up  to  that  time, 
waiting.  I  walked  forth  to  seek  my  fortune. 
I  was  to  begin  life  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land, 
without  a  friend,  or  a  penny,  or  any  clothes  but 
those  I  had  on  my  back.  I  had  not  any  ad- 
vantage on  my  side  in  the  world — not  one,  ex- 
cept good  health  and  the  lack  of  any  necessity 
to  waste  any  time  or  anxiety  on  the  watching  of 
my  baggage.  No,  I  forget.  I  reflected  that  I 
had  one  prodigious  advantage  over  paupers  in 
other  lands — I  was  in  America!    I  was  in  the 


84       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

heaven-provided  refuge  of  the  oppressed  and 
the  forsaken! 

Just  as  that  comforting  thought  passed 
through  my  mind,  some  young  men  set  a  fierce 
dog  on  me.  I  tried  to  defend  myself,  but  could 
do  nothing.  I  retreated  to  the  recess  of  a 
closed  doorway,  and  there  the  dog  had  me  at 
his  mercy,  flying  at  my  throat  and  face  or  any 
part  of  my  body  that  presented  itself.  I 
shrieked  for  help,  but  the  young  men  only 
jeered  and  laughed.  Two  men  in  gray  uni- 
forms (pohcemen  is  their  official  title)  looked 
on  for  a  minute  and  then  walked  leisurely 
away.  But  a  man  stopped  them  and  brought 
them  back  and  told  them  it  was  a  shame  to 
leave  me  in  such  distress.  Then  the  two  pohce- 
men beat  off  the  dog  with  small  clubs,  and  a 
comfort  it  was  to  be  rid  of  him,  though  I  was 
just  rags  and  blood  from  head  to  foot.  The 
man  who  brought  the  pohcemen  asked  the 
young  men  why  they  abused  me  in  that  way, 
and  they  said  they  didn't  want  any  of  his  med- 
dling.   And  they  said  to  him : 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD  85 

"This  Ching  divil  comes  till  Ameriky  to  take 
the  bread  out  o'  dacent  intilhgent  white  men's 
mouths,  and  whin  they  try  to  defind  their  rights 
there's  a  dale  o'  fuss  made  about  it." 

They  began  to  threaten  my  benefactor,  and 
as  he  saw  no  friendliness  in  the  faces  that  had 
gathered  meanwhile,  he  went  on  his  way.  He 
got  many  a  curse  when  he  was  gone.  The 
policemen  now  told  me  I  was  under  arrest  and 
must  go  with  them.  I  asked  one  of  them  what 
wrong  I  had  done  to  any  one  that  I  should  be 
arrested,  and  he  only  struck  me  with  his  club 
and  ordered  me  to  "hold  my  yap."  With  a 
jeering  crowd  of  street  boys  and  loafers  at  my 
heels,  I  was  taken  up  an  alley  and  into  a  stone- 
paved  dungeon  which  had  large  cells  all  down 
one  side  of  it,  with  iron  gates  to  them.  I  stood 
up  by  a  desk  while  a  man  behind  it  wrote  down 
certain  things  about  me  on  a  slate.  One  of  my 
captors  said : 

"Enter  a  charge  against  this  Chinaman  of 
being  disorderly  and  disturbing  the  peace." 

I  attempted  to  say  a  word,  but  he  said: 


86       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

"Silence!  Now  ye  had  better  go  slow,  my 
good  fellow.  This  is  two  or  three  times  you've 
tried  to  get  off  some  of  your  d — d  insolence. 
Lip  won't  do  here.  You've  got  to  simmer 
down,  and  if  you  don't  take  to  it  paceable 
we'll  see  if  we  can't  make  you.  Fat's  your 
name?" 

"Ah  Song  Hi." 

"^Zmswhat?" 

I  said  I  did  not  understand,  and  he  said 
what  he  wanted  was  my  true  name,  for  he 
guessed  I  picked  up  this  one  since  I  stole  my 
last  chickens.  They  all  laughed  loudly  at 
that. 

Then  they  searched  me.  They  found 
nothing,  of  course.  They  seemed  very  angry 
and  asked  who  I  supposed  would  "go  my  bail 
or  pay  my  fine."  When  they  explained  these 
things  to  me,  I  said  I  had  done  nobody  any 
harm,  and  why  should  I  need  to  have  bail  or 
pay  a  fine?  Both  of  them  kicked  me  and 
warned  me  that  I  would  find  it  to  my  advan- 
tage to  try  and  be  as  civil  as  convenient.    I  pro- 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD  87 

tested  that  I  had  not  meant  anything  disre- 
spectful. Then  one  of  them  took  me  to  one 
side  and  said : 

"Now  look  here,  Johnny,  it's  no  use  you 
playing  softly  wid  us.  We  mane  business,  ye 
know ;  and  the  sooner  ye  put  us  on  the  scent  of 
a  V,  the  asier  ye '11  save  yerself  from  a  dale  of 
trouble.  Ye  can't  get  out  o'  this  for  anny  less. 
Who's  your  f rinds?" 

I  told  him  I  had  not  a  single  friend  in  all  the 
land  of  America,  and  that  I  was  far  from  home 
and  help,  and  very  poor.  And  I  begged  him  to 
let  me  go. 

He  gathered  the  slack  of  my  blouse  collar  in 
his  grip  and  jerked  and  shoved  and  hauled  at 
me  across  the  dungeon,  and  then  unlocking  an 
iron  cell-gate  thrust  me  in  with  a  kick  and 
said: 

"Rot  there,  ye  furrin  spawn,  till  ye  lairn 
that  there's  no  room  in  America  for  the  hkes  of 
ye  or  your  nation." 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


88       CURIOUS   EEPUBLIC   OF   GONDOUR 
LETTER   V 

San  Francisco,  18 — . 
Dear  Ching-Foo  :  You  will  remember  that 
I  had  just  been  thrust  violently  into  a  cell  in 
the  city  prison  when  I  wrote  last.  I  stumbled 
and  fell  on  some  one.  I  got  a  blow  and  a  curse ; 
and  on  top  of  these  a  kick  or  two  and  a  shove. 
In  a  second  or  two  it  was  plain  that  I  was  in  a 
nest  of  prisoners  and  was  being  "passed 
around" — for  the  instant  I  was  knocked  out  of 
the  way  of  one  I  fell  on  the  head  or  heels  of 
another  and  was  promptly  ejected,  only  to 
land  on  a  third  prisoner  and  get  a  new  contri- 
bution of  kicks  and  curses  and  a  new  destina- 
tion. I  brought  up  at  last  in  an  unoccupied 
corner,  very  much  battered  and  bruised  and 
sore,  but  glad  enough  to  be  let  alone  for  a  little 
while.  I  was  on  the  flag-stones,  for  there  was 
no  furniture  in  the  den  except  a  long,  broad 
board,  or  combination  of  boards,  like  a  barn 
door,  and  this  bed  was  accormnodating  five  or 
six  persons,  and  that  was  its  full  capacity. 
They  lay  stretched  side  by  side,  snoring — when 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD  89 

not  fighting.  One  end  of  the  board  was  four 
inches  higher  than  the  other,  and  so  the  slant 
answered  for  a  pillow.  There  were  no  blank- 
ets, and  the  night  was  a  little  chilly ;  the  nights 
are  always  a  little  chilly  in  San  Francisco, 
though  never  severely  cold.  The  board  was  a 
deal  more  comfortable  than  the  stones,  and  oc- 
casionally some  flag-stone  plebeian  like  me 
would  try  to  creep  to  a  place  on  it;  and  then  the 
aristocrats  would  hammer  him  good  and  make 
him  think  a  flag  pavement  was  a  nice  enough 
place  after  all. 

I  lay  quiet  in  my  corner,  stroking  my  bruises 
and  listening  to  the  revelations  the  prisoners 
made  to  each  other — and  to  me — for  some  that 
were  near  me  talked  to  me  a  good  deal.  I  had 
long  had  an  idea  that  Americans,  being  free, 
had  no  need  of  prisons,  which  are  a  contrivance 
of  despots  for  keeping  restless  patriots  out  of 
mischief.  So  I  was  considerably  surprised  to 
find  out  my  mistake. 

Ours  was  a  big  general  cell,  it  seemed,  for 
the  temporary  accommodation  of  all  comers 


90       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

whose  crimes  were  trifling.  Among  us  there 
were  two  Americans,  two  "Greasers"  (Mex- 
icans), a  Frenchman,  a  German,  four  Irish- 
men, a  Chilenean  (and,  in  the  next  cell,  only 
separated  from  us  by  a  grating,  two  women) , 
all  drunk,  and  all  more  or  less  noisy;  and  as 
night  fell  and  advanced,  they  grew  more  and 
more  discontented  and  disorderly,  occasionally 
shaking  the  prison  bars  and  glaring  through 
them  at  the  slowly  pacing  officer,  and  cursing 
him  with  all  their  hearts.  The  two  women  were 
nearly  middle-aged,  and  they  had  only  had 
enough  hquor  to  stimulate  instead  of  stupefy 
them.  Consequently  they  would  fondle  and 
kiss  each  other  for  some  minutes,  and  then  fall 
to  fighting  and  keep  it  up  till  they  were  just 
two  grotesque  tangles  of  rags  and  blood  and 
tumbled  hair.  Then  they  would  rest  awhile, 
and  pant  and  swear.  While  they  were  affec- 
tionate they  always  spoke  of  each  other  as 
"ladies,"  but  while  they  were  fighting 
"strumpet"  was  the  mildest  name  they  could 
think  of — and  they  could  only  make  that  do  by 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND    ABROAD  91 

tacking  some  sounding  profanity  to  it.  In 
their  last  fight,  which  was  toward  midnight, 
one  of  them  bit  off  the  other's  finger,  and  then 
the  officer  interfered  and  put  the  "Greaser" 
into  the  "dark  cell"  to  answer  for  it — because 
the  woman  that  did  it  laid  it  on  him,  and  the 
other  woman  did  not  deny  it  because,  as  she 
said  afterward,  she  "wanted  another  crack  at 
the  huzzy  when  her  finger  quit  hurting,"  and 
so  she  did  not  want  her  removed.  By  this  time 
those  two  women  had  mutilated  each  other's 
clothes  to  that  extent  that  there  was  not  suffi- 
cient left  to  cover  their  nakedness.  I  found 
that  one  of  these  creatures  had  spent  nine  years 
in  the  county  jail,  and  that  the  other  one  had 
spent  about  four  or  five  years  in  the  same  place. 
They  had  done  it  from  choice.  As  soon  as  they 
were  discharged  from  captivity  they  would  go 
straight  and  get  drunk,  and  then  steal  some 
trifling  thing  while  an  officer  was  observing 
them.  That  would  entitle  them  to  another  two 
months  in  jail,  and  there  they  would  occupy 
clean,  airy  apartments,  and  have  good  food  in 


92       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

plenty,  and  being  at  no  expense  at  all,  they 
could  make  shirts  for  the  clothiers  at  half  a 
dollar  apiece  and  thus  keep  themselves  in 
smoking  tobacco  and  such  other  luxuries  as 
they  wanted.  When  the  two  months  were  up, 
they  would  go  just  as  straight  as  they  could 
walk  to  Mother  Leonard's  and  get  drunk ;  and 
from  there  to  Kearney  street  and  steal  some- 
thing; and  thence  to  this  city  prison,  and  next 
day  back  to  the  old  quarters  in  the  county  jail 
again.  One  of  them  had  really  kept  this  up 
for  nine  years  and  the  other  four  or  five,  and 
both  said  they  meant  to  end  their  days  in  that 
prison.*  Finally,  both  these  creatures  fell 
upon  me  while  I  was  dozing  with  my  head 
against  their  grating,  and  battered  me  con- 
siderably, because  they  discovered  that  I  was  a 
Chinaman,  and  they  said  I  was  "a  bloody  inter- 
lopin'  loafer  come  from  the  devil's  own  coun- 
try to  take  the  bread  out  of  dacent  people's 
mouths  and  put  down  the  wages  for  work  whin 


The  former  of  the  two  did. — [Ed.  Mem. 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD  93 

it  was  all  a  Christian  could  do  to  kape  body  and 
sowl  together  as  it  was."  "Loafer"  means  one 
who  will  not  work. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


LETTER  VI 

San  Francisco,  18 — . 

Dear  Ching-Foo:  To  continue — the  two 
women  became  reconciled  to  each  other  again 
through  the  common  bond  of  interest  and  sym- 
pathy created  between  them  by  pounding  me 
in  partnership,  and  when  they  had  finished 
me  they  fell  to  embracing  each  other  again  and 
swearing  more  eternal  affection  like  that  which 
had  subsisted  between  them  all  the  evening, 
barring  occasional  interruptions.  They  agreed 
to  swear  the  finger-biting  on  the  Greaser  in 
open  court,  and  get  him  sent  to  the  peniten- 
tiary for  the  crime  of  mayhem. 

Another  of  our  company  was  a  boy  of  four- 
teen who  had  been  watched  for  some  time  by 
ofiicers  and  teachers,  and  repeatedly  detected 
in  enticing  young  girls  from  the  public  schools 


94       CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

to  the  lodgings  of  gentlemen  down  town.  He 
had  been  furnished  with  lures  in  the  form  of 
pictures  and  books  of  a  peculiar  kind,  and  these 
he  had  distributed  among  his  chents.  There 
were  likenesses  of  fifteen  of  these  young  girls 
on  exhibition  (only  to  prominent  citizens  and 
persons  in  authority,  it  was  said,  though  most 
people  came  to  get  a  sight)  at  the  police  head- 
quarters, but  no  punishment  at  all  was  to  be 
inflicted  on  the  poor  little  misses.  The  boy  was 
afterward  sent  into  captivity  at  the  House  of 
Correction  for  some  months,  and  there  was  a 
strong  disposition  to  punish  the  gentlemen  who 
had  employed  the  boy  to  entice  the  girls,  but  as 
that  could  not  be  done  without  making  public 
the  names  of  those  gentlemen  and  thus  injur- 
ing them  socially,  the  idea  was  finally  given  up. 
There  was  also  in  our  cell  that  night  a 
photographer  (a  kind  of  artist  who  makes  like- 
nesses of  people  with  a  machine) ,  who  had  been 
for  some  time  patching  the  pictured  heads  of 
well-known  and  respectable  young  ladies  to  the 
nude,    pictured    bodies    of    another    class    of 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD  95 

women;  then  from  this  patched  creation  he 
would  make  photographs  and  sell  them  pri- 
vately at  high  prices  to  rowdies  and  black- 
guards, averring  that  these,  the  best  young 
ladies  of  the  city,  had  hired  him  to  take  their 
likenesses  in  that  unclad  condition.  AVhat  a 
lecture  the  pohce  judge  read  that  photog- 
rapher when  he  was  convicted!  He  told  him 
his  crime  was  httle  less  than  an  outrage.  He 
abused  that  photographer  till  he  almost  made 
him  sink  through  the  floor,  and  then  he  fined 
him  a  hundred  dollars.  And  he  told  him  he 
might  consider  himself  lucky  that  he  didn't  fine 
him  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars.  They 
are  awfully  severe  on  crime  here. 

About  two  or  two  and  a  half  hours  after 
midnight,  of  that  first  experience  of  mine  in 
the  city  prison,  such  of  us  as  were  dozing  were 
awakened  by  a  noise  of  beating  and  di'agging 
and  groaning,  and  in  a  Httle  while  a  man  was 
pushed  into  our  den  with  a  "There,  d — n  you, 
soak  there  a  spell!" — and  then  the  gate  was 
closed  and  the  officers  went  away  again.    The 


96       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

man  who  was  thrust  among  us  fell  limp  and 
helpless  by  the  grating,  but  as  nobody  could 
reach  him  with  a  kick  without  the  trouble  of 
hitching  along  toward  him  or  getting  fairly 
up  to  deliver  it,  our  people  only  grumbled  at 
him,  and  cursed  him,  and  called  him  insulting 
names — for  misery  and  hardship  do  not  make 
their  victims  gentle  or  charitable  toward  each 
other.  But  as  he  neither  tried  humbly  to  con- 
cihate  our  people  nor  swore  back  at  them,  his 
unnatiu-al  conduct  created  surprise,  and  sev- 
eral of  the  party  crawled  to  him  where  he  lay  in 
the  dim  light  that  came  through  the  grating, 
and  examined  into  his  case.  His  head  was  very 
bloody  and  his  wits  were  gone.  After  about 
an  hour,  he  sat  up  and  stared  around ;  then  his 
eyes  grew  more  natural  and  he  began  to  tell 
how  that  he  was  going  along  with  a  bag  on  his 
shoulder  and  a  brace  of  policemen  ordered  him 
to  stop,  which  he  did  not  do — was  chased  and 
caught,  beaten  ferociously  about  the  head  on 
the  way  to  the  prison  and  after  arrival  there, 
and  finally  thrown  into  our  den  hke  a  dog. 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND    ABROAD  97 

And  in  a  few  seconds  he  sank  down  again  and 
grew  flighty  of  speech.  One  of  our  people  was 
at  last  penetrated  with  something  vaguely  akin 
to  compassion,  may  be,  for  he  looked  out 
through  the  gratings  at  the  guardian  officer 
pacing  to  and  fro,  and  said : 

"Say,  Mickey,  this  shrimp's  goin'  to  die." 

"Stop  your  noise!"  was  all  the  answer  he  got. 
But  presently  our  man  tried  it  again.  He 
di'ew  himself  to  the  gratings,  grasping  them 
with  his  hands,  and  looking  out  through  them, 
^sat  waiting  till  the  officer  was  passing  once 
more,  and  then  said : 

"Sweetness,  you'd  better  mind  your  eye, 
now,  because  you  beats  have  killed  this  cuss. 
You've  busted  his  head  and  he'll  pass  in  his 
checks  before  sun-up.  You  better  go  for  a 
doctor,  now,  you  bet  you  had." 

The  officer  delivered  a  sudden  rap  on  our 
man's  knuckles  with  his  club,  that  sent  him 
scampering  and  howling  among  the  sleeping 
forms  on  the  flag-stones,  and  an  answering 
burst  of  laughter  came  from  the  half  dozen 


98       CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

policemen  idling  about  the  railed  desk  in  the 
middle  of  the  dungeon. 

But  there  was  a  putting  of  heads  together 
out  there  presently,  and  a  conversing  in  low 
voices,  which  seemed  to  show  that  our  man's 
talk  had  made  an  impression ;  and  presently  an 
officer  went  away  in  a  hurry,  and  shortly  came 
back  with  a  person  who  entered  our  cell  and 
felt  the  bruised  man's  pulse  and  threw  the  glare 
pf  a  lantern  on  his  drawn  face,  striped  with 
blood,  and  his  glassy  eyes,  fixed  and  vacant. 
,The  doctor  examined  the  man's  broken  head 
also,  and  presently  said : 

"If  you'd  called  me  an  hour  ago  I  might 
have  saved  this  man,  may  be — too  late  now." 

Then  he  walked  out  into  the  dungeon  and 
the  officers  surrounded  him,  and  they  kept  up 
a-  low  and  earnest  buzzing  of  conversation  for 
fifteen  minutes,  I  should  think,  and  then  the 
doctor  took  his  departure  from  the  prison. 
Several  of  the  officers  now  came  in  and  worked 
a  httle  with  the  wounded  man,  but  toward  day- 
light he  died. 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD  99 

It  was  the  longest,  longest  night!  And 
when  the  dayhght  came  jfiltering  reluctantly 
into  the  dungeon  at  last,  it  was  the  grayest, 
dreariest,  saddest  dayhght !  And  yet,  when  an 
officer  by  and  by  turned  off  the  sickly  yellow 
gas  flame,  and  immediately  the  gray  of  dawn 
became  fresh  and  white,  there  was  a  hfting  of 
my  spirits  that  acknowledged  and  believed  that 
the  night  was  gone,  and  straightway  I  fell  to 
,stretching  my  sore  limbs,  and  looking  about 
me  with  a  grateful  sense  of  reHef  and  a  return- 
ing interest  in  life.  About  me  lay  the  evi- 
dences that  what  seemed  now  a  feverish  dream 
and  a  nightmare  was  the  memory  of  a  reahty 
instead.  For  on  the  boards  lay  four  frowsy, 
ragged,  bearded  vagabonds,  snoring — one 
turned  end-for-end  and  resting  an  unclean 
foot,  in  a  ruined  stocking,  on  the  hairy  breast 
of  a  neighbour ;  the  young  boy  was  uneasy,  and 
lay  moaning  in  his  sleep ;  other  forms  lay  half 
revealed  and  half  concealed  about  the  floor ;  in 
,the  furthest  corner  the  gray  light  fell  upon  a 
-sheet,  whose  elevations  and  depressions  indi- 


100     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

cated  the  places  of  the  dead  man's  face  and 
feet  and  folded  hands;  and  through  the  divid- 
ing bars  one  could  discern  the  almost  nude 
;forms  of  the  two  exiles  from  the  county  jail 
twined  together  in  a  drunken  embrace,  and 
sodden  with  sleep. 

By  and  by  all  the  animals  in  all  the  cages 
awoke,  and  stretched  themselves,  and  ex- 
changed a  few  cuffs  and  curses,  and  then  began 
to  clamour  for  breakfast.  Breakfast  was 
brought  in  at  last — bread  and  beefsteak  on  tin 
plates,  and  black  coffee  in  tin  cups,  and  no 
grabbing  allowed.  And  after  several  dreary 
hours  of  waiting,  after  this,  we  were  all 
marched  out  into  the  dungeon  and  joined  there 
by  all  manner  of  vagrants  and  vagabonds,  of 
all  shades  and  colours  and  nationalities,  from 
the  other  cells  and  cages  of  the  place;  and 
pretty  soon  our  whole  menagerie  was  marched 
up -stairs  and  locked  fast  behind  a  high  raihng 
in  a  dirty  room  with  a  dirty  audience  in  it.  And 
this  audience  stared  at  us,  and  at  a  man  seated 
on  high  behind  what  they  call  a  pulpit  in  this 


GOLBSMITH^S    FRIEND   ABROAD         101 

country,  and  at  some  clerks  and  other  officials 
seated  below  him — and  waited.  This  was  the 
poUce  court. 

The  court  opened.  Pretty  soon  I  was  com- 
pelled to  notice  that  a  culprit's  nationality 
made  for  or  against  him  in  this  court.  Over- 
whelming proofs  were  necessary  to  convict  an 
Irishman  of  crime,  and  even  then  his  punish- 
ment amounted  to  Httle;  Frenchmen,  Span- 
iards, and  Itahans  had  strict  and  unprejudiced 
justed  meted  out  to  them,  in  exact  accordance 
with  the  evidence ;  negroes  were  promptly  pun- 
ished, when  there  was  the  shghtest  preponder- 
ance of  testimony  against  them;  but  Chinamen 
were  punished  always,  apparently.  Now  this 
gave  me  some  uneasiness,  I  confess.  I  knew 
that  this  state  of  things  must  of  necessity  be  ac- 
cidental, because  in  this  country  all  men  were 
free  and  equal,  and  one  person  could  not  take 
to  himself  an  advantage  not  accorded  to  all 
other  individuals.  I  knew  that,  and  yet  in  spite 
of  it  I  was  uneasy. 

And  I  grew  still  more  uneasy,  when  I  found 


102     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

that  any  succored  and  befriended  refugee  from 
Ireland  or  elsewhere  could  stand  up  before  that 
judge  and  swear  away  the  life  or  hberty  or 
character  of  a  refugee  from  China ;  but  that  by 
the  law  of  the  land  the  Chinaman  could  not 
testify  against  the  Irishman.  I  was  really  and 
truly  uneasy,  but  still  my  faith  in  the  universal 
hberty  that  America  accords  and  defends,  and 
my  deep  veneration  for  the  land  that  offered 
all  distressed  outcasts  a  home  and  protection, 
was  strong  within  me,  and  I  said  to  myself  that 
it  would  all  come  out  right  yet. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


letter  vii 

San  Francisco,  18 — . 
Dear  Ching  Foo  :  I  was  glad  enough  when 
my  case  came  up.  An  hom''s  experience  had 
made  me  as  tired  of  the  pohce  court  as  of  the 
dungeon.  I  was  not  uneasy  about  the  result 
of  the  trial,  but  on  the  contrary  felt  that  as  soon 
as  the  large  auditory  of  Americans  present 
should  hear  how  that  the  rowdies  had  set  the 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD         103 

dogs  on  me  when  I  was  going  peacefully  along 
the  street,  and  how,  when  I  was  all  torn  and 
bleeding,  the  officers  arrested  me  and  put  me 
in  jail  and  let  the  rowdies  go  free,  the  gallant 
hatred  of  oppression  which  is  part  of  the  very 
^esh  and  blood  of  every  American  would  be 
stii-red  to  its  utmost,  and  I  should  be  instantly 
set  at  hberty.  In  truth  I  began  to  fear  for  the 
other  side.  There  in  full  view  stood  the 
ruffians  who  had  misused  me,  and  I  began  to 
fear  that  in  the  first  burst  of  generous  anger 
occasioned  by  the  reveahnent  of  what  they  had 
done,  they  might  be  harshly  handled,  and  pos- 
sibly even  banished  the  country  as  having  dis- 
honoured her  and  being  no  longer  worthy  to  re- 
main upon  her  sacred  soil. 

The  official  interpreter  of  the  court  asked 
my  name,  and  then  spoke  it  aloud  so  that  all 
could  hear.  Supposing  that  all  was  now  ready, 
I  cleared  my  throat  and  began — in  Chinese, 
because  of  my  imperfect  English : 

"Hear,  O  high  and  mighty  mandarin,  and 
beheve!    As  I  went  about  my  peaceful  busi- 


104     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

ness  in  the  street,  behold  certain  men  set  a  dog 
on  me,  and " 

"Silence!" 

It  was  the  judge  that  spoke.  The  inter- 
preter whispered  to  me  that  I  must  keep  per- 
fectly still.  He  said  that  no  statement  would 
be  received  from  me — I  must  only  talk  through 
my  lawyer. 

I  had  no  lawyer.  In  the  early  morning  a 
pohce  court  lawyer  (termed,  in  the  higher 
circles  of  society,  a  "shyster")  had  come  into 
our  den  in  the  prison  and  offered  his  services  to 
me,  but  I  had  been  obliged  to  go  without  them 
because  I  could  not  pay  in  advance  or  give 
security.  I  told  the  interpreter  how  the  matter 
stood.  He  said  I  must  take  my  chances  on  the 
witnesses  then.  I  glanced  around,  and  my  fail- 
ing confidence  revived. 

"Call  those  four  Chinamen  yonder,"  I  said. 
"They  saw  it  all.  I  remember  their  faces  per- 
fectly. They  will  prove  that  the  white  men  set 
the  dog  on  me  when  I  was  not  harming  them." 

"That  won't  work,"  said  he.    "In  this  coun- 


GOLDSMITH^S    FRIEND    ABROAD         105 

try  white  men  can  testify  against  Chinamen  all 
they  want  to,  but  Chinamen  ain't  allowed  to 
testify  against  white  men!^ 

What  a  chill  went  through  me !  And  then  I 
felt  the  indignant  blood  rise  to  my  cheek  at  this 
libel  upon  the  Home  of  the  Oppressed,  where 
all  men  are  free  and  equal — perfectly  equal — 
perfectly  free  and  perfectly  equal.  I  despised 
this  Chinese-speaking  Spaniard  for  his  mean 
slander  of  the  land  that  was  sheltering  and 
feeding  him.  I  sorely  wanted  to  sear  his  eyes 
with  that  sentence  from  the  great  and  good 
American  Declaration  of  Independence  which 
we  have  copied  in  letters  of  gold  in  China  and 
keep  hung  up  over  our  family  altars  and  in  our 
temples — I  mean  the  one  about  all  men  being 
created  free  and  equal. 

But  woe  is  me,  Ching  Foo,  the  man  was 
right.  He  was  right,  after  all.  There  were 
my  witnesses,  but  I  could  not  use  them.  But 
now  came  a  new  hope.  I  saw  my  white  friend 
come  in,  and  I  felt  that  he  had  come  there  pur- 
posely to  help  me.    I  may  almost  say  I  knew 


106     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

it.  So  I  grew  easier.  He  passed  near  enough 
to  me  to  say  under  his  breath,  "Don't  be 
afraid,"  and  then  I  had  no  more  fear.  But 
presently  the  rowdies  recognised  him  and  be- 
gan to  scowl  at  him  in  no  friendly  way,  and  to 
make  threatening  signs  at  him.  The  two 
officers  that  arrested  me  fixed  their  eyes  stead- 
ily on  his ;  he  bore  it  well,  but  gave  in  presently, 
and  di'opped  his  eyes.  They  still  gazed  at  his 
eyebrows,  and  every  time  he  raised  his  eyes  he 
encountered  their  winkless  stare — until  after  a 
minute  or  two  he  ceased  to  lift  his  head  at  all. 
The  judge  had  been  giving  some  instructions 
privately  to  some  one  for  a  little  while,  but  now 
he  was  ready  to  resume  business.  Then  the 
trial  so  unspeakably  important  to  me,  and 
freighted  with  such  prodigious  consequence  to 
my  wife  and  children,  began,  progressed, 
ended,  was  recorded  in  the  books,  noted  down 
by  the  newspaper  reporters,  and  forgotten  by 
everybody  but  me — all  in  the  Httle  space  of  two 
minutes ! 

"Ah  Song  Hi,  Chinaman.    Officers  O'Flan- 


GOLDSMITH^S    FEIEND    ABROAD         107 

nigan  and  O' Flaherty,  witnesses.     Come  for- 
ward, Officer  O'Flannigan." 

Officer — "He  was  making  a  distm'bance  in 
Kearny  street." 

Judge — "Any  witnesses  on  the  other  side?" 
No  response.  The  white  friend  raised  his 
eyes — encountered  Officer  O 'Flaherty's — 
blushed  a  little — got  up  and  left  the  court- 
room, avoiding  all  glances  and  not  taking  his 
own  from  the  floor. 

Judge — "Give  him  five  dollars  or  ten  days." 
In  my  desolation  there  was  a  glad  surprise 
in  the  words ;  but  it  passed  away  when  I  found 
that  he  only  meant  that  I  was  to  be  fined  five 
dollars  or  imprisoned  ten  days  longer  in  de- 
fault of  it. 

There  were  twelve  or  fifteen  Chinamen  in 
our  crowd  of  prisoners,  charged  with  all 
manner  of  little  thefts  and  misdemeanors,  and 
their  cases  were  quickly  disposed  of,  as  a  gen- 
eral thing.  When  the  charge  came  from  a 
policeman  or  other  white  man,  he  made  his 
statement  and  that  was  the  end  of  it,  unless  the 


108    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

Chinaman's  lawj^er  could  find  some  white  per- 
son to  testify  in  his  client's,  behalf,  for,  neither 
the  accused  Chinaman  nor  his  countrymen  be- 
ing allowed  to  say  anything,  the  statement  of 
the  officers  or  other  white  person  was  amply 
sufficient  to  convict.  So,  as  I  said,  the  China- 
men's cases  were  quickly  disposed  of,  and  fines 
and  imprisonment  promptly  distributed  among 
them.  In  one  or  two  of  the  cases  the  charges 
against  Chinamen  were  brought  by  Chinamen 
themselves,  and  in  those  cases  Chinamen  testi- 
fied against  Chinamen,  through  the  inter- 
preter; but  the  fixed  rule  of  the  com-t  being 
that  the  preponderance  of  testimony  in  such 
cases  should  determine  the  prisoner's  guilt  or 
innocence,  and  there  being  nothing  very  bind- 
ing about  an  oath  administered  to  the  lower 
orders  of  our  people  without  the  ancient 
solemnity  of  cutting  off  a  chicken's  head  and 
burning  some  yellow  paper  at  the  same  time, 
the  interested  parties  naturally  drum  up  a 
cloud  of  witnesses  who  are  cheerfully  wilhng 
to  give  evidence  without  ever  knowing  any- 


GOLDSMITH^S   FRIEND   ABROAD         109 

thing  about  the  matter  in  hand.  The  judge 
has  a  custom  of  ratthng  through  with  as  much 
of  this  testimony  as  his  patience  will  stand,  and 
then  shutting  off  the  rest  and  striking  an  aver- 
age. 

By  noon  all  the  business  of  the  court  was  fin- 
ished, and  then  several  of  us  who  had  not  fared 
well  were  remanded  to  prison;  the  judge  went 
home ;  the  lawyers,  and  officers,  and  spectators 
departed  their  several  ways,  and  left  the  un- 
comely court-room  to  silence,  solitude,  and 
Stiggers,  the  newspaper  reporter,  which  latter 
would  now  write  up  his  items  ( said  an  ancient 
Chinaman  to  me) ,  in  the  which  he  would  praise 
all  the  policemen  indiscriminately  and  abuse 
the  Chinamen  and  dead  people. 

Ah  Song  Hi. 


OUR  PRECIOUS  LUNATIC* 

New  York,  May  10. 
The  Richardson-McFarland  jury  had  been 
out  one  hour  and  fifty  minutes.  A  breathless 
silence  brooded  over  court  and  auditory — a 
silence  and  a  stillness  so  absolute,  notwith- 
standing the  vast  multitude  of  human  beings 
packed  together  there,  that  when  some  one  far 
away  among  the  throng  under  the  northeast 
balcony  cleared  his  throat  with  a  smothered 
little  cough  it  startled  everybody  uncomfort- 
ably, so  distinctly  did  it  grate  upon  the  pulse- 
less air.  At  that  imposing  moment  the  bang  of 
a  door  was  heard,  then  the  shuffle  of  approach- 
ing feet,  and  then  a  sort  of  surging  and  sway- 
ing disorder  among  the  heads  at  the  entrance 
from  the  jury-room  told  them  that  the  Twelve 
were  coming.  Presently  all  was  silent  again, 
and  the  foreman  of  the  jury  rose  and  said:    r 

*  From  the  Buffalo  Express,  Saturday,  May  14,  1870. 

110 


OUR    PEECIOUS   LUNATIC  111 

"Your  Honor  and  Gentlemen:  We,  the 
jury  charged  with  the  duty  of  determining 
whether  the  prisoner  at  the  bar,  Daniel  Mc- 
Farland,  has  been  guilty  of  murder,  in  taking 
by  surprise  an  unarmed  man  and  shooting  him 
to  death,  or  whether  the  prisoner  is  afflicted 
with  a  sad  but  irresponsible  insanity  which  at 
times  can  be  cheered  only  by  violent  entertain- 
ment with  firearms,  do  find  as  follows,  namely : 

That  the  prisoner,  Daniel  McFarland,  is  in- 
sane as  above  described.    Because: 

1.  His  great  grandfather's  stepfather  was 
tainted  with  insanity,  and  frequently  killed 
people  who  were  distasteful  to  him.  Hence, 
insanity  is  hereditary  in  the  family. 

2.  For  nine  years  the  prisoner  at  the  bar  did 
not  adequately  support  his  family.  Strong 
:*"'cumstantial  evidence  of  insanity. 

3.  For  nine  years  he  made  of  his  home,  as  a 
general  thing,  a  poor-house;  sometimes  (but 
very  rarely)  a  cheery,  happy  habitation;  fre- 
quently the  den  of  a  beery,  drivelhng,  stupe- 
fied animal;  but  never,  as  far  as  ascertained. 


112    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

the  abiding  place  of  a  gentleman.     These  be 
evidences  of  insanity. 

4.  He  once  took  his  young  unmarried  sister- 
in-law  to  the  museum;  while  there  his  heredi- 
tary insanity  came  upon  him  to  such  a  degree 
that  he  hiccupped  and  staggered;  and  after- 
ward, on  the  way  home,  even  made  love  to  the 
young  girl  he  was  protecting.  These  are  the 
acts  of  a  person  not  in  his  right  mind. 

5.  For  a  good  while  his  sufferings  were  so 
great  that  he  had  to  submit  to  the  inconven- 
ience of  having  his  wife  give  pubhc  readings 
for  the  family  support;  and  at  times,  when  he 
handed  these  shameful  earnings  to  the  bar- 
keeper, his  haughty  soul  was  so  torn  with  an- 
guish that  he  could  hardly  stand  without  lean- 
ing against  something.  At  such  times  he  has 
been  known  to  shed  tears  into  his  sustenance 
till  it  diluted  to  utter  inefficiency.  Inattention 
of  this  nature  is  not  the  act  of  a  Democrat  un- 
afflicted  in  mind. 

6.  He  never  spared  expense  in  making  his 
wife  comfortable  during  her  occasional  confine- 


OUR    PRECIOUS   LUNATIC  113 

ments.  Her  father  is  able  to  testify  to  this. 
There  was  always  an  element  of  unsoundness 
about  the  prisoner's  generosities  that  is  very 
suggestive  at  this  time  and  before  this  court. 

7.  Two  years  ago  the  prisoner  came  fear- 
lessly up  behind  Richardson  in  the  dark,  and 
shot  him  in  the  leg.  The  prisoner's  brave 
and  protracted  defiance  of  an  adversity  that 
for  years  had  left  him  little  to  depend  upon 
for  support  but  a  wife  who  sometimes  earned 
scarcely  anything  for  weeks  at  a  time,  is  evi- 
dence that  he  would  have  appeared  in  front  of 
Richardson  and  shot  him  in  the  stomach  if  he 
had  not  been  insane  at  the  time  of  the  shooting. 

8.  Fourteen  months  ago  the  prisoner  told 
Archibald  Smith  that  he  was  going  to  kill 
Richardson.    This  is  insanity. 

9.  Twelve  months  ago  he  told  Marshall  P. 
Jones  that  he  was  going  to  kill  Richardson. 
Insanity. 

10.  Nine  months  ago  he  was  lurking  about 
Richardson's  home  in  New  Jersey,  and  said  he 
was  going  to  kill  Richardson.    Insanity. 


114     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

11.  Seven  months  ago  he  showed  a  pistol  to 
Seth  Brown  and  said  that  that  was  for  Rich- 
ardson. He  said  Brown  testified  that  at  that 
time  it  seemed  plain  that  something  was  the 
matter  with  McFarland,  for  he  crossed  the 
street  diagonally  nine  times  in  fifty  yards,  ap- 
parently without  any  settled  reason  for  doing 
so,  and  finally  fell  in  the  gutter  and  went  to 
sleep.  He  remarked  at  the  time  that  McFar- 
land acted  strange — believed  he  was  insane. 
Upon  hearing  Brown's  evidence,  John  W. 
Galen,  M.D.,  affu-med  at  once  that  McFarland 
was  insane. 

12.  Five  months  ago,  McFarland  showed  his 
customary  pistol,  in  his  customary  way,  to  his 
bed-fellow,  Charles  A.  Dana,  and  told  him  he 
was  going  to  kill  Richardson  the  first  time  an 
opportunity  oJffered.    Evidence  of  insanity. 

13.  Five  months  and  two  weeks  ago  McFar- 
land asked  John  JNIorgan  the  time  of  day,  and 
turned  and  walked  rapidly  away  without  wait- 
ing for  an  answer.  Almost  indubitable  evi- 
dence of  insanity.    And — 


OUR   PRECIOUS   LUNATIC  115 

14.  It  is  remarkable  that  exactly  one  week 
after  this  circumstance,  the  prisoner,  Daniel 
McFarland,  confronted  Albert  D.  Richardson 
suddenly  and  without  warning,  and  shot  him 
dead.  This  is  manifest  insanity.  Everything 
we  know  of  the  prisoner  goes  to  show  that  if  he 
had  been  sane  at  the  time,  he  would  have  shot 
his  victim  from  behind. 

15.  There  is  an  absolutely  overwhelming 
mass  of  testimony  to  show  that  an  hour  before 
the  shooting,  McFarland  was  anxious  and 
UNEASY^  and  that  five  minutes  after  it  he  was 
EXCITED.  Thus  the  accumulating  conjectures 
and  evidences  of  insanity  culminate  in  this  sub- 
lime and  unimpeachable  proof  of  it.  There- 
fore— 

Your  Honor  and  Gentlemen — We  the 
jury  pronounce  the  said  Daniel  McFarland 

INNOCENT  OF  MURDER^  BUT  CALAMITOUSLY  IN- 
SANE.^^ 

The  scene  that  ensued  almost  defies  descrip- 
tion. Hats,  handkerchiefs  and  bonnets  were 
frantically  waved  above  the  massed  heads  in  the 


116    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

courtroom,  and  three  tremendous  cheers  and  a 
tiger  told  where  the  sympathies  of  the  court 
and  people  were.  Then  a  hundred  pursed  lips 
were  advanced  to  kiss  the  liberated  prisoner, 
and  many  a  hand  thrust  out  to  give  him  a  con- 
gratulatory shake — but  presto !  with  a  maniac's 
own  quickness  and  a  maniac's  own  fury  the 
lunatic  assassin  of  Richardson  fell  upon  his 
friends  with  teeth  and  nails,  boots  and  office 
furniture,  and  the  amazing  rapidity  with  which 
he  broke  heads  and  limbs,  and  rent  and  sun- 
dered bodies,  till  nearly  a  hundred  citizens  were 
reduced  to  mere  quivering  heaps  of  fleshy  odds 
and  ends  and  crimson  rags,  was  hke  nothing  in 
this  world  but  the  exultant  frenzy  of  a  plung- 
ing, tearing,  roaring  devil  of  a  steam  machine 
when  it  snatches  a  human  being  and  spins  him 
and  whirls  him  till  he  shreds  away  to  nothing- 
ness like  a  "Four  o'clock"  before  the  breath  of 
a  child. 

The  destruction  was  awful.  It  is  said  that 
within  the  space  of  eight  minutes  McFarland 
killed  and  crippled  some  six  score  persons  and 


OUR   PRECIOUS   LUNATIC  117 

tore  down  a  large  portion  of  the  City  Hall 
building,  carrying  away  and  casting  into 
Broadway  six  or  seven  marble  columns  fifty- 
four  feet  long  and  weighing  nearly  two  tons 
each.  But  he  was  finally  captured  and  sent  in 
chains  to  the  lunatic  asylum  for  fife.  (By  late 
telegrams  it  appears  that  this  is  a  mistake. — 
Editor  Express.) 

But  the  really  curious  part  of  this  whole 
matter  is  yet  to  be  told.  And  that  is,  that  Mc- 
Farland's  most  intimate  friends  believe  that  the 
very  next  time  that  it  ever  occurred  to  him  that 
the  insanity  plea  was  not  a  mere  pohtic  pre- 
tense, was  wheil  the  verdict  came  in.  They 
think  that  the  starthng  thought  burst  upon 
him  then,  that  if  twelve  good  and  true  men,  able 
to  comprehend  all  the  baseness  of  perjury',  pro- 
claimed under  oath  that  he  was  a  lunatic,  there 
was  no  gainsaying  such  evidence  and  that  he 

UNQUESTIONABLY  WAS  INSANE ! 

Possibly  that  was  really  the  way  of  it.  It  is 
dreadful  to  think  that  maybe  the  most  awful 
calamity  that  can  befall  a  man,  namely,  loss  of 


118    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

reason,  was  precipitated  upon  this  poor  pris- 
oner's head  by  a  jury  that  could  have  hanged 
him  instead,  and  so  done  him  a  mercy  and  his 
country  a  service.  M.  T. 

Postscript — Later 

May  11 — I  do  not  expect  anybody  to  beheve 
so  astounding  a  thing,  and  yet  it  is  the  solemn 
truth  that  instead  of  instantly  sending  the 
dangerous  lunatic  to  the  insane  asylum  (which 
I  naturally  supposed  they  would  do,  and  so  I 
prematurely  said  they  had)  the  court  has  actu- 
ally SET  him  at  liberty.  Comment  is  im- 
necessary.  M.  T. 


THE  EUROPEAN  WAR* 

First  Day 
THE  EUROPEAN  WAR!  !  I 

NO  BATTLE  YEt!  !  ! 

HOSTILITIES  imminent!  !  ! 

TREMENDOUS   EXCITEMENT. 

AUSTRIA  arming! 

Berlin^  Tuesday. 

No  battle  has  been  fought  yet.  But  hostil- 
ities may  burst  forth  any  week. 

There  is  tremendous  excitement  here  over 
news  from  the  front  that  two  companies  of 
French  soldiers  are  assembhng  there. 

It  is  rumoured  that  Austria  is  arming — 
what  with,  is  not  known. 


Second  Day 
THE  EUROPEAN  WAR 

NO  BATTLE  YEt! 
FIGHTING  IMMINENT. 


*  From  the  Buffalo  Express,  July  25,  1870. 

119 


120    CURIOUS  REPUBLIC   OF   GONDOUR 

AWFUL  EXCITEMENT. 

RUSSIA  SIDES  WITH  PRUSSIA  I 

ENGLAND  neutral!  ! 

AUSTRIA  NOT  ARMING. 

Berlin,  Wednesday. 

"No  battle  has  been  fought  yet.  However, 
all  thoughtful  men  feel  that  the  land  may  be 
drenched  with  blood  before  the  Summer  is  over. 

There  is  an  awful  excitement  here  over  the 
rumour  that  two  companies  of  Prussian  troops 
have  concentrated  on  the  border.  German  con- 
fidence remains  unshaken !  ! 

There  is  news  to  the  effect  that  Russia 
espouses  the  cause  of  Prussia  and  will  bring 
4,000,000  men  to  the  field. 

England  proclaims  strict  neutrahty. 

The  report  that  Austria  is  arming  needs  con- 
firmation.   

Third  Day 
THE  EUROPEAN  WAR 

NO  BATTLE  YEt! 
BLOODSHED  IMMINENT!  I 


THE   EUROPEAN    WAR  121 

ENORMOUS  EXCITEMENT !  ! 

INVASION  OF  Prussia!  ! 

INVASION  or  FRANCE !  !  ! 

RUSSIA  SIDES   VTITH  FRANCE. 

ENGLAND  STILL  NEUTRAL ! 

FIRING  heard! 

THE  EMPEROR  TO  TAKE  COMMAND. 

Paris^  Thursday. 

No  battle  has  been  fought  yet.  But  Field 
Marshal  McMahon  telegraphs  thus  to  the 
Emperor : 

"If  the  Frinch  airmy  survoives  until  Christ- 
mas there'll  be  throuble.  Forninst  this  fact  it 
would  be  sagacious  if  the  divil  wint  the  rounds 
of  his  establishment  to  prepare  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  tuk  the  precaution  to  warrum  up  the 
Prussian  depairtment  a  bit  agin  the  day. 

Mike." 

There  is  an  enormous  state  of  excitement 
here  over  news  from  the  front  to  the  effect  that 
yesterday  France  and  Prussia  were  simulta- 
neously invaded  by  the  two  bodies  of  troops 


122     CURIOUS    REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

which  lately  assembled  on  the  border.  Both 
armies  conducted  their  invasions  secretly  and 
are  now  hunting  around  for  each  other  on  op- 
posite sides  of  the  border. 

Russia  espouses  the  cause  of  France.  She 
will  bring  200,000  men  to  the  field. 

England  continues  to  remain  neutral. 

Firing  was  heard  yesterday  in  the  direction 
of  Blucherberg,  and  for  a  while  the  excitement 
was  intense.  However  the  people  reflected 
that  the  country  in  that  direction  is  uninhabit- 
able, and  impassable  by  anything  but  birds, 
they  became  quiet  again. 

The  Emperor  sends  his  troops  to  the  field 
with  immense  enthusiasm.  He  will  lead  them 
in  person,  when  they  return. 


Fourth  Day 
THE  EUROPEAN  WAR! 

NO  BATTLE  YET !  ! 

THE  TROOPS  GROWING  OLD ! 

BUT  BITTER  STRIEE  IMMINENT ! 

PRODIGIOUS  excitement! 


THE   EUROPEAN    WAR  123 

THE  INVASIONS  SUCCESSFULLY  ACCOMPLISHED 

AND  THE  INVADERS  SAFe! 

RUSSIA  SIDES  WITH  BOTH  SIDES 

ENGLAND  WILL  FIGHT  BOTh! 

London,  Friday. 

No  battle  has  been  fought  thus  far,  but  a 
miUion  impetuous  soldiers  are  gritting  their 
teeth  at  each  other  across  the  border,  and  the 
most  serious  fears  entertained  that  if  they  do 
not  die  of  old  age  first,  there  will  be  bloodshed 
in  this  war  yet. 

The  prodigious  patriotic  excitement  goes  on. 
In  Prussia,  per  Prussian  telegrams,  though 
contradicted  from  France.  In  France,  per 
French  telegrams,  though  contradicted  from 
Prussia. 

The  Prussian  invasion  of  France  was  a  mag- 
nificent success.  The  military  failed  to  find  the 
French,  but  made  good  their  return  to  Prussia 
without  the  loss  of  a  single  man.  The  French 
invasion  of  Prussia  is  also  demonstrated  to 
have  been  a  brilliant  and  successful  achieve- 


124    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

ment.  The  army  failed  to  find  the  Prussians, 
but  made  good  their  return  to  the  Vaterland 
without  bloodshed,  after  having  invaded  as 
much  as  they  wanted  to. 

There  is  glorious  news  from  Russia  to  the 
effect  that  she  will  side  with  both  sides. 

Also  from  England — she  will  fight  both 
sides. 


London^  Thursday  evening. 
I  rushed  over  too  soon.    I  shall  return  home 
on  Tuesday's  steamer  and  wait  until  the  war 
begins.  M.  T. 


THE  AVILD  MAN  INTERVIEWED* 

THERE  has  been  so  much  talk  about 
the  mysterious  "wild  man"  out  there 
in  the  West  for  some  time,  that  I 
finally  felt  it  was  my  duty  to  go  out 
and  interview  him.  There  was  something  pe- 
cuharly  and  touchingly  romantic  about  the 
creature  and  his  strange  actions,  according  to 
the  newspaper  reports.  He  was  represented  as 
being  hairy,  long-armed,  and  of  great  strength 
and  stature;  ugly  and  cimibrous;  avoiding 
men,  but  appearing  suddenly  and  unexpect- 
edly to  women  and  children ;  going  armed  with 
a  club,  but  never  molesting  any  creature,  ex- 
cept sheep,  or  other  prey;  fond  of  eating  and 
di-inking,  and  not  particular  about  the  quality, 
quantity,  or  character  of  the  beverages  and 
edibles;  living  in  the  woods  like  a  wild  beast, 
but  never  angry;  moaning,  and  sometimes 
howling,  but  never  uttering  articulate  sounds. 

*  From  the  Buffalo  Express,  September  18,  1869. 

125 


126    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

Such  was  "Old  Shep"  as  the  papers  painted 
him.  I  felt  that  the  story  of  his  life  must  be 
a  sad  one — a  story  of  suffering,  disappoint- 
ment, and  exile — a  story  of  man's  inhumanity 
to  man  in  some  shape  or  other — and  I  longed 
to  persuade  the  secret  from  him. 

•  •  •  • 

"Since  you  say  you  are  a  member  of  the 
press,"  said  the  wild  man,  "I  am  wilhng  to  tell 
you  all  you  wish  to  know.  Bye  and  bye  you 
will  comprehend  why  it  is  that  I  wish  to  un- 
bosom myself  to  a  newspaper  man  when  I 
have  so  studiously  avoided  conversation  with 
other  people.  I  will  now  unfold  my  strange 
story.  I  was  born  with  the  world  we  live  upon, 
almost.    I  am  the  son  of  Cain." 

"What?" 

"I  was  present  when  the  flood  was  an- 
nounced." 

"Which?" 

"I  am  the  father  of  the  Wandering  Jew." 

"Sir?" 

I  moved  out  of  range  of  his  club,  and  went 


THE    WILD    MAN    INTERVIEWED        127 

on  taking  notes,  but  keeping  a  wary  eye  on  him 
all  the  while.  He  smiled  a  melancholy  smile 
and  resimaed: 

"When  I  glance  back  over  the  dreary  waste 
of  ages,  I  see  many  a  glimmering  and  mark 
that  is  familiar  to  my  memory.  And  oh,  the 
leagues  I  have  travelled!  the  things  I  have 
seen!  the  events  I  have  helped  to  emphasise! 
I  was  at  the  assassination  of  Caesar.  I  marched 
upon  Mecca  with  Mahomet.  I  was  in  the  Cru- 
sades, and  stood  with  Godfrey  when  he  planted 
the  banner  of  the  cross  on  the  battlements  of 
Jerusalem.    I — ." 

"One  moment,  please.  Have  you  given 
these  items  to  any  other  journal?    Can  I — " 

"Silence.  I  was  in  the  Pinta's  shrouds  with 
Columbus  when  America  burst  upon  his  vision. 
I  saw  Charles  I  beheaded.  I  was  in  London 
when  the  Gunpowder  Plot  was  discovered.  I 
was  present  at  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings. 
I  was  on  American  soil  when  the  battle  of  Lex- 
ington was  fought — when  the  declaration  was 
promulgated — when  Cornwalhs  surrendered — 


128    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

when  Washington  died.  I  entered  Paris  with 
Napoleon  after  Elba.  I  was  present  when  you 
mounted  your  guns  and  manned  your  fleets 
for  the  war  of  1812 — when  the  South  fired 
upon  Sumter — ^when  Richmond  fell — when  the 
President's  life  was  taken.  In  all  the  ages  I 
have  helped  to  celebrate  the  trimnphs  of  gen- 
ius, the  achievements  of  arms,  the  havoc  of 
storm,  fire,  pestilence,  famine." 

"Your  career  has  been  a  stirring  one.  Might 
I  ask  how  you  came  to  locate  in  these  dull 
Kansas  woods,  when  you  have  been  so  accus- 
tomed to  excitement  during  what  I  might  term 
so  protracted  a  period,  not  to  put  too  fine  a 
point  on  it?" 

"Listen.  Once  I  was  the  honoured  servitor 
of  the  noble  and  illustrious"  (here  he  heaved  a 
sigh,  and  passed  his  hairy  hand  across  his  eyes) 
"but  in  these  degenerate  days  I  am  become  the 
slave  of  quack  doctors  and  newspapers.  I 
am  driven  from  pillar  to  post  and  hurried  up 
and  down,  sometimes  with  stencil-plate  and 
paste-brush  to  defile  the  fences  with  cabahstic 


THE    WILD    MAN    INTERVIEWED        129 

legends,  and  sometimes  in  grotesque  and  ex- 
travagant character  at  the  behest  of  some  driv- 
ing journal.  I  attended  to  that  Ocean  Bank 
robbery  some  weeks  ago,  when  I  was  hardly 
rested  from  finishing  up  the  pow-wow  about 
the  completion  of  the  Pacific  Railroad ;  imme- 
diately I  was  spirited  off  to  do  an  atrocious 
murder  for  the  benefit  of  the  New  York 
papers ;  next  to  attend  the  wedding  of  a  patri- 
archal millionaire ;  next  to  raise  a  hurrah  about 
the  great  boat  race;  and  then,  just  when  I  had 
begun  to  hope  that  my  old  bones  would  have  a 
rest,  I  am  bundled  off  to  this  howling  wilder- 
ness to  strip,  and  jibber,  and  be  ugly  and  haiiy, 
and  pull  down  fences  and  waylay  sheep,  and 
waltz  around  with  a  club,  and  play  'Wild  Man' 
generally — and  all  to  gratify  the  whim  of  a 
bedlam  of  crazy  newspaper  scribblers?  From 
one  end  of  the  continent  to  the  other,  I  am  de- 
scribed as  a  gorilla,  with  a  sort  of  human  seem- 
ing about  me — and  all  to  gratify  this  quill- 
driving  scum  of  the  earth!" 
"Poor  old  carpet  bagger!" 


130     CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

"I  have  been  served  infamously,  often,  in 
modern  and  semi-modern  times.  I  have  been 
compelled  by  base  men  to  create  fraudulent 
history,  and  to  perpetrate  all  sorts  of  humbugs. 
I  wrote  those  crazy  Junius  letters,  I  moped  in 
a  French  dungeon  for  fifteen  years,  and  wore 
a  ridiculous  Iron  Mask ;  I  poked  around  your 
Northern  forests,  among  your  vagabond  In- 
dians, a  solemn  French  idiot,  personating  the 
ghost  of  a  dead  Dauphin,  that  the  gaping 
world  might  wonder  if  we  had  'a  Bourbon 
among  us';  I  have  played  sea-serpent  off  Na- 
hant,  and  Woolly-Horse  and  What-is-it  for 
the  museums;  I  have  interviewed  politicians 
for  the  Sun,  worked  up  all  manner  of  miracles 
for  the  Herald,  ciphered  up  election  returns 
for  the  World,  and  thundered  Political  Econ- 
omy through  the  Tribune.  I  have  done  all  the 
extravagant  things  that  the  wildest  invention 
could  contrive,  and  done  them  well,  and  this  is 
my  reward — playing  Wild  Man  in  Kansas 
without  a  shirt !" 

"Mysterious  being,  a  light  dawns  vaguely 


THE    WILD    MAX    INTERVIEWED        131 

upon  me — it  grows  apace — what — what  is  your 
name?" 

"Sensation!" 

"Hence,  horrible  shape!" 

It  spoke  again: 

"Oh  pitiless  fate,  my  destiny  hounds  me 
once  more.  I  am  called.  I  go.  Alas,  is  there 
no  rest  for  me?" 

In  a  moment  the  Wild  Man's  features 
seemed  to  soften  and  refine,  and  his  form  to  as- 
sume a  more  human  grace  and  symmetry.  His 
club  changed  to  a  spade,  and  he  shouldered  it 
and  started  away  sighing  profoundly  and 
shedding  tears. 

"Whither,  poor  shade?" 

"To  DIG   UP   THE   ByEON   FAIVIILy!" 

Such  was  the  response  that  floated  back 
upon  the  wind  as  the  sad  spirit  shook  its  ring- 
lets to  the  breeze,  flourished  its  shovel  aloft, 
and  disappeared  beyond  the  brow  of  the  hill. 

All  of  which  is  in  strict  accordance  with  the 
facts. 

M.  T. 


LAST  WORDS  OF  GREAT  MEN* 

Marshal  Neil's  last  words  were:  "L'armee  fran- 
caise!"    (The  French  army.) — Exchange. 

WHAT  a  sad  thing  it  is  to  see  a 
man  close  a  grand  career  with 
a  plagiarism  in  his  mouth. 
Napoleon's  last  words  were: 
"Tete  d'armee."  (Head  of  the  army.)  Neither 
of  those  remarks  amounts  to  anything  as  "last 
words,"  and  reflect  little  credit  upon  the  ut- 
ter ers.  A  distinguished  man  should  be  as  par- 
ticular about  his  last  words  as  he  is  about  his 
last  breath.  He  should  write  them  out  on  a 
shp  of  paper  and  take  the  judgment  of  his 
friends  on  them.  He  should  never  leave  such 
a  thing  to  the  last  hour  of  his  life,  and  trust  to 
an  intellectual  spirit  at  the  last  moment  to  en- 
able him  to  say  something  smart  with  his  latest 
gasp  and  launch  into  eternity  with  grandeur. 
No — a  man  is  apt  to  be  too  much  fagged  and 

*From  the  Buffalo  Express,  September  11,  1869. 

132 


LAST    WORDS    OF   GREAT    MEN  133 

exhausted,  both  in  body  and  mind,  at  such  a 
time,  to  be  rehable ;  and  maybe  the  very  thing 
he  wants  to  say,  he  cannot  think  of  to  save  him ; 
and  besides  there  are  his  weeping  friends  both- 
ering around;  and  worse  than  all  as  hkely  as 
not  he  may  have  to  deliver  his  last  gasp  before 
he  is  expecting  to.  A  man  cannot  always  ex- 
pect to  think  of  a  natty  thing  to  say  under  such 
circumstances,  and  so  it  is  pure  egotistic  osten- 
tation to  put  it  off.  There  is  hardly  a  case  on 
record  where  a  man  came  to  his  last  moment 
unprepared  and  said  a  good  thing — hardly  a 
case  where  a  man  trusted  to  that  last  moment 
and  did  not  make  a  solemn  botch  of  it  and  go 
out  of  the  world  feeling  absurd. 

Now  there  was  Daniel  Webster.  IN'obody 
could  tell  him  anything.  He  was  not  afraid. 
He  could  do  something  neat  when  the  time 
came.  And  how  did  it  turn  out?  Why,  his 
will  had  to  be  fixed  over ;  and  then  all  the  re- 
lations came ;  and  first  one  thing  and  then  an- 
other interfered,  till  at  last  he  only  had  a 
chance  to  say,  "I  still  live,"  and  up  he  went. 


134    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC    OF   GONDOUR 

Of  course  he  didn't  still  live,  because  he  died 
— and  SO  he  might  as  well  have  kept  his  last 
words  to  himself  as  to  have  gone  and  made  such 
a  failure  of  it  as  that.  A  week  before  that  fif- 
teen minutes  of  calm  reflection  would  have  en- 
abled that  man  to  contrive  some  last  words  that 
would  have  been  a  credit  to  himself  and  a  com- 
fort to  his  family  for  generations  to  come. 

And  there  was  John  Quincy  Adams.  Rely- 
ing on  his  splendid  abilities  and  his  coolness  in 
emergencies,  he  trusted  to  a  happy  hit  at  the 
last  moment  to  carry  him  through,  and  what 
was  the  result  ?  Death  smote  him  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  and  he  observed,  casually, 
"This  is  the  last  of  earth."  The  last  of  earth! 
Why  "the  last  of  earth"  when  there  was  so 
much  more  left?  If  he  had  said  it  was  the  last 
rose  of  summer  or  the  last  run  of  shad,  it  would 
have  had  as  much  point  in  it.  What  he  meant 
to  say  was,  "Adam  was  the  first  and  Adams 
is  the  last  of  earth,"  but  he  put  it  off  a  trifle  too 
long,  and  so  he  had  to  go  with  that  unmeaning 
observation  on  his  lips. 


LAST   WORDS   OF   GEEAT   MEN  135 

And  there  we  have  Napoleon's  *'Tete 
d'armee."  That  don't  mean  anything.  Taken 
by  itself,  "Head  of  the  army,"  is  no  more  im- 
portant than  "Head  of  the  poUce."  And  yet 
that  was  a  man  who  could  have  said  a  good 
thing  if  he  had  barred  out  the  doctor  and 
studied  over  it  a  while.  Marshal  Neil,  with 
half  a  century  at  his  disposal,  could  not  dash  off 
anything  better  in  his  last  moments  than  a  poor 
plagiarism  of  another  man's  words,  which  were 
not  worth  plagiarizing  in  the  first  place.  "The 
French  army."  Perfectly  irrelevant — per- 
fectly flat — ^utterly  pointless.  But  if  he  had 
closed  one  eye  significantly,  and  said,  "The 
subscriber  has  made  it  lively  for  the  French 
army,"  and  then  thrown  a  httle  of  the  comic 
into  his  last  gasp,  it  would  have  been  a  thing  to 
remember  with  satisfaction  all  the  rest  of  his 
life.  I  do  wish  our  great  men  would  quit  say- 
ing these  flat  things  just  at  the  moment  they 
die.  Let  us  have  their  next-to-the-last  words 
for  a  while,  and  see  if  we  cannot  patch  up  from 
them  something  that  will  be  more  satisfactory. 


136    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC   OF  GONDOUR 

The  public  does  not  wish  to  be  outraged  in  this 
way  all  the  time. 

But  when  we  come  to  call  to  mind  the  last 
words  of  parties  who  took  the  trouble  to  make 
the  proper  preparation  for  the  occasion,  we  im- 
mediately notice  a  happy  difference  in  the  re- 
sult. 

There  was  Chesterfield.  Lord  Chesterfield 
had  laboured  all  his  life  to  build  up  the  most 
shining  reputation  for  affabihty  and  elegance 
of  speech  and  manners  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
And  could  you  suppose  he  failed  to  appreciate 
the  efficiency  of  characteristic  "last  words,"  in 
;the  matter  of  seizing  the  successfully  driven 
nail  of  such  a  reputation  and  clinching  on  the 
other  side  for  ever?  Not  he.  He  prepared 
himself.  He  kept  his  eye  on  the  clock  and  his 
finger  on  his  pulse.  He  awaited  his  chance. 
And  at  last,  when  he  knew  his  time  was  come, 
he  pretended  to  think  a  new  visitor  had  en- 
tered, and  so,  with  the  rattle  in  his  throat  em- 
phasised for  dramatic  effect,  he  said  to  the 
servant,   "Shin   around,   John,   and   get   the 


LAST    WORDS    OF   GREAT    MEN  137 

gentleman  a  chair."     And  so  he  died,  amid 
thmiders  of  applause. 

Next  we  have  Benjamin  Franklin.  Frank- 
lin, the  author  of  Poor  Richard's  quaint  say- 
ings; Franklin  the  immortal  axiom-builder, 
who  used  to  sit  up  at  nights  reducing  the  rank- 
est old  threadbare  platitudes  to  crisp  and 
snappy  maxims  that  had  a  nice,  varnished, 
original  look  in  their  regimentals;  who  said, 
"Virtue  is  its  own  reward ;"  who  said,  "Procras- 
tination is  the  thief  of  time;"  who  said,  "Time 
and  tide  wait  for  no  man"  and  "Necessity  is 
the  mother  of  invention;"  good  old  Franklin, 
the  Josh  Billings  of  the  eighteenth  century — 
though,  sooth  to  say,  the  latter  transcends  him 
in  proverbial  originahty  as  much  as  he  falls 
short  of  him  in  correctness  of  orthography. 
What  sort  of  tactics  did  Franklin  pursue  ?  He 
pondered  over  his  last  words  for  as  much  as  two 
weeks,  and  then  when  the  time  came,  he  said, 
"None  but  the  brave  deserve  the  fair,"  and  died 
happy.  He  could  not  have  said  a  sweeter 
thing  if  he  had  lived  till  he  was  an  idiot. 


138    CURIOUS   REPUBLIC   OF   GONDOUR 

Byron  made  a  poor  business  of  it,  and  could 
not  think  of  anything  to  say,  at  the  last  mo- 
ment but,  "Augusta-sister-Lady  Byron — tell 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe" — etc.,  etc., — but 
Shakespeare  was  ready  and  said,  "England  ex- 
pects every  man  to  do  his  duty !"  and  went  off 
with  splendid  eclat. 

And  there  are  other  instances  of  sagacious 
preparation  for  a  felicitous  closing  remark. 
For  instance: 

Joan  of  Arc  said,  "Tramp,  tramp,  tramp  the 
boys  are  marching." 

Alexander  the  Great  said,  "Another  of  those 
Santa  Cruz  punches,  if  you  please." 

The  Empress  Josephine  said,  "Not  for 
Jo — "  and  could  get  no  further. 

Cleopatra  said,  "The  Old  Guard  dies,  but 
never  surrenders." 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh  said,  "Executioner,  can 
I  take  your  whetstone  a  moment,  please?" 
though  what  for  is  not  clear. 

John  Smith  said,  "Alas,  I  am  the  last  of  my 
race." 


LAST   WORDS    OF   GREAT    MEN  139 

Queen  Elizabeth  said,  "Oh,  I  would  give  my 
kingdom  for  one  moment  more — I  have  for- 
gotten my  last  words." 

And  Red  Jacket,  the  noblest  Indian  brave 
that  ever  wielded  a  tomahawk  in  defence  of  a 
friendless  and  persecuted  race,  expired  with 
these  touching  words  upon  his  hps,  ''Wawkaw- 
ampanoosuc,  win7iebagowallawsagamoresas- 
hatchewanf'  There  was  not  a  dry  eye  in  the 
wigwam. 

Let  not  this  lesson  be  lost  upon  our  pubHc 
men.  Let  them  take  a  healthy  moment  for 
preparation,  and  contrive  some  last  words  that 
shall  be  neat  and  to  the  point.  Let  Louis  Na- 
poleon say, 

"I  am  content  to  follow  my  uncle — still,  I 
do  not  wish  to  improve  upon  his  last  word. 
Put  me  down  for  'Tete  d'armee.'  " 

And  Garret  Davis,  "Let  me  recite  the  un- 
abridged dictionary." 

And  H.  G.,  "I  desire,  now,  to  say  a  few 
words  on  poHtical  economy." 

And  Mr.  Bergh,  "Only  take  part  of  me  at 


140    CURIOUS  REPUBLIC   OF  GONDOUR 

a  time,  if  the  load  will  be  fatiguing  to  the  hearse 
horses." 

And  Andrew  Johnson,  "I  have  been  an 
Alderman,  Member  of  Congress,  Governor, 
Senator,  Pres — adieu,  you  know  the  rest." 

And  Seward,  "Alas  !-ka." 

And  Grant,  "O." 

All  of  which  is  respectfully  submitted,  with 
the  most  honorable  intentions. 

M.  T. 

P.  S. — I  am  obliged  to  leave  out  the  illustra- 
tions. The  artist  finds  it  impossible  to  make  a 
picture  of  people's  last  words. 


^T 


^ 


317.44 


1625GU  585581 


